[Talk-us] Adopt-a-highway representation in OSM

[Serge Wroclawski]

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 6:55 AM,  <dies38061 at mypacks.net> wrote:
> Whoa!  Source is a deprecated tag, having been for years?!  Good grief - the wiki has no indication that this is the case; http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:source .  Could someone please confirm that source is a deprecated tag and that it should no longer be used? --ceyockey

You're right; the documentation didn't reflect that.

The source tag is one of those things which has changed. We used to
stick a ton of information on the object, but as time has gone on,
we've moved metadata to the changeset.

Another example of this would be "created_by". Older objects in OSM
have a created_by tag that indicates the editor used to create the
object. Modern editors put that information on the changeset. The
editor community has discussed making "source" a default tag in the
editor when a secondary source is used, for example if you were to
have a Bing imagery layer, "source=bing" would be automatically filled
in.

"source" has been generally deprecated by use. Editors no longer use
them by default, and most mappers don't use them on objects.

The fact the documentation didn't reflect that is frustrating and
confusing, but not surprising. I've fixed the documentation and added
a section about the old use.

- Serge
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>>From: Serge Wroclawski <emacsen at gmail.com>
>>Sent: Jan 1, 2013 9:31 PM
>>To: dies38061 at mypacks.net
>>Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Adopt-a-highway representation in OSM
>>
>>Off list.
>>
>>I see you've put source and source:date tags on many objects.
>>
>>"source" on objects has been deprecated for years.
>>
>>I also see you've omitted those tags on your changesets (where they
>>should be). Sadly changesets can't be edited once they've closed, but
>>maybe you can use them in the future?
>>
>>- Serge