[Talk-GB] sport=soccer not sport=football.

Warin 61sundowner at gmail.com
Mon Jun 13 01:04:57 UTC 2016


This arises out of my edits targeting sport=football and trying to 
resolve these into a 'good' value.  'SomeoneElse' suggest this should be 
discussed here. Well ok.
The discussion may disintegrate into 2 things - 'soccer is an 
Americanism' and 'football is common usage'.

---------------------------- Americanism?

Apparently 'soccer' comes from Oxford, England ...
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/06/the-origin-of-the-word-soccer/

So not an Americanism.

---------------------- Common Usage.  My view.
I will support and defend the use of British English.
I will support precision in tagging terminology.
I do not support confusion.

The term 'football' is confusing in world terms (ref 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(word)) and I cannot support it use.
And the term 'soccer' is recognised in British English ...
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/soccer "A form of 
football..."
Thus a more precise word to use compared to 'football'
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/football "Any of 
various forms of team game involving kicking..."
Thus 'football' encompasses many games.
The term soccer is precise, well understood (in both British and world 
terms) and should be used. Precision before what some claim is 'common 
use' for me.

(If you question my support of British English see
  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Tag:sport%3Dshot-put .. and
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Jewellery_shop)

---------------------------- OSM Usage - to demonstrate British majority 
agreement.

Some samples using overpass turbo .
(Chose a small area so it does not time out - particularly for soccer, I 
picked these at random to give a sample .. feel free to do your own)
http://overpass-turbo.eu/
Use the wizard enter 'sport=football' and then run, repeat with wizard 
'sport=soccer' - numerical results at bottom right of the screen.
Results:
London area ~200 football ~10,000 soccer
Birmingham area ~16 football ~2,400 soccer
Liverpool-Manchester area ~130 football ~6,600 soccer
Glasgow- Edinburgh area ~80 football ~6,500 soccer

The vast majority use soccer!  Say ~98% soccer and ~2% football.
I would think there is a majority support for sport=soccer here too.

------------------------------------ What I think should be done.
There is a small improvement to OSM data consistency and understanding 
to be had by looking at all the features using the tag
sport=football
and changing it to
sport=soccer
where it can be determined that the sport is actually soccer.
Where that cannot be determined a fixme tag could be placed to indicate 
further work.
I am not proposing some automated edit ... each needs to be 'looked at' 
visually by a human!




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