[Talk-GB] What is a residential area?

[David Woolley]

On 07/05/2019 13:30, Martin Wynne wrote:
> This idea of primary and secondary tags is new to me. There is no such 
> distinction in the iD editor -- all applied tags are simply listed in 
> alphabetical order.

Things like name, height, and colour are normally considered secondary.

Things like landuse, building and leisure are considered primary.

Generally if you don't have a primary tag, the object won't get 
rendered.  If you have more than one primary tag, it becomes difficult 
for renderer to choose how to interpret the object.  However, if there 
is no great conflict, it is sometimes acceptable to combine, primary tags.

Often combining primary tags indicates that you are oversimplifying, 
e.g. it is common to have both shop and building, but that is probably 
wrong, because the shop often doesn't occupy the whole building. 
Similarly a pub may really be the gardens, as well as the building.

leisure and landuse conflict because they are both really specifying 
land use.

I think your biggest problem though is expecting that there is one 
correct way of doing things.  In a project with distributed decisions 
making, you are just not going to have everyone agree on what OSM is for 
and how things should be mapped.

However, I wouldn't say the primary purpose of the area you were asking 
about is to be a garden; I would say it is somewhere to reside, and the 
gardens form a subsidiary part of it, and should be represented with 
nested areas.