[Talk-GB] Tagging of British canals.

[richard]

Firstly a disclaimer, I am mostly an armchair mapper.

I am working my way around the canals of Britain, tracing the canal banks and 
tidying up locks etc. (I have probably seen a dozen different ways that locks 
have been tagged.) 

I started off tagging the canal banks as

waterway=canal+area=yes

but it was pointed out to me by another mapper that this was confusing 
renderers and was pointed to the Wiki entry that suggested they should be 
tagged as

natural=water+water=canal

I therefore changed my existing tagging to reflect this and tagged my 
subsequent tracing this way. I have come across a few areas that have been 
traced by others (Mostly a long time ago and IMHO very poorly) that have been 
tagged as 

waterway=riverbank

and I have changed these as I have realigned them.

Today I have had a critical message from another mapper who said among other 
things,


"Wide-ranging changes to existing tagging schemes, just because you read a 
Wiki page is not good enough."

I have two problems with this sentence,

1/ My CHANGES have not been what I would consider wide ranging as most of the 
mapping has been done by myself therefore new not changed.

2/ If the reading of a Wiki page is not good enough then why bother having a 
wiki? Do we have to resort to the mailing list every time we want to tag 
something?

If there is an "accepted" way to map canals can someone point me to it? 


-- 
Richard.