[Talk-GB] Mass edits of landuse /natural tags

[SomeoneElse]

John Baker wrote:
>
> But if there was no existing landuse tag what is the harm?

Without visiting each place and doing an on-site survey, how do you know 
what the actual landuse is?

It worries me that these sort of global search-and-replaces are taking 
place without any discussion

The best person to decide what something should be tagged as is someone 
who's been there and had a look.  They may be making incorrect 
assumptions about tag use (think of the various odd "designations" that 
pop up from newbies that are really "descriptions"), but in that case 
the best way is to discuss it with the mapper concerned, then raise on a 
list such as this one if they insist on "doing it wrong".  In most cases 
with non-newbie mappers there's usually a genuine reason why they've 
tagged things as they have.  Any attempt to restrict tag use like this 
will restrict the usefulness of the data, in this case to "well it looks 
green on aerial imagery", which anyone in their armchair can see.  The 
advantage of OSM over other maps (even over the OS for most of the 
country) is having people who actually go there and have a look, not 
just take as given what e.g. a local authority thinks is there, or what 
it looks like from a few thousand feet up.

Cheers,
Andy

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