[Talk-us] Key:man_made... Outdated language?

[Rory McCann]

On 10/03/17 22:27, Joshua Houston wrote:
> It occurred to me that "man_made" is an outdated term that should be
> phased out from OpenStreetMap language. The philosophy of OpenStreetMap
> is very inclusive and that should be represented even in the way data is
> tagged. I'd like to propose to change the key from "man_made" to
> "human_made" and start a discussion on it. Many parts of society are
> trying to implement a more inclusive language, NASA for instance has
> changed "manned missions" to "crewed missions". I think it is an
> important goal to make OSM inclusive whenever there is a choice.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Joshua Houston 

I generally support these kinds of things. However such an old tag is in
use so much, that changing it would really mess a lot of things up for a
while. You'd need a lot of work to move over. So I'm skeptical purely
for practical reasons. And I presume you're not talking about changing
things in the USA, but worldwide, so it would be best to use the talk@
and/or tagging@ mailing lists.

Some might say "man" is gender neutral. I'll believe that when straight
men talk about all the men they've slept with.

I don't think this sort of thing is unique to the USA. The British film
Hot Fuzz has lots of jokes about "policeman" vs "police officer".

Rory