[Talk-us] Removing tiger:* tags

[Dave Hansen]

On Thu, 2010-07-29 at 18:58 -0400, Anthony wrote:
> >> > However, they also contain the original
> >> > breakdown of the prefix, root, and suffix before they got combined into the
> >> > name and then expanded by the balrog-kun bot - information which will be
> >> > useful in the majority of cases if we ever get back to
> >> > splitting/standardizing.
> >>
> >> If you want to do that, just go back to the original database.
> >
> > Sometimes, since people removed things and moved them around, it's very
> > difficult to _go_ back to the original database.  Every one of these
> > tags make that more feasible.
> 
> Just look in the history for when the way was originally added.

With way combination and splitting, _this_ isn't feasible, either.
TIGER didn't have any bridges, and so doing this for a road with bridges
since inserted can be a real pain.

> >> > AFAIK, we haven't (yet) agreed that these tags should be removed, right?
> >>
> >> Dunno.
> >
> > Please keep them.  They're not hurting anything.
> 
> Please define them in the wiki, and I'll keep them.  Unless I have a
> definition, I have no way of determining if they're correct or not.

They're defined very precisely in the ruby code that imported them.
That's publicly available in SVN.  If someone is interested in sticking
them on the wiki, I'll be happy to point you to it.

> Furthermore, don't store redundant data in the OSM database.  There's
> absolutely no excuse for having 200 ways which all say name=Cain Rd,
> name_base=Cain, name_type=Rd.  It's absolutely terrible design.
> 
> So come up with a better design, define it in the wiki, and I'll keep it.

Heh.  I actually like the concept of separating out the different parts
of the name.  I think that's a nice design on the part of the TIGER
folks.  OSM itself is designed around the single name concept, and I
believe that these help bridge the gap.  We can't change the design now.
It got imported, what, 3 years ago?  I guess we could have a robot crawl
them like we did the node tags, but what's the gain?  

-- Dave