[Talk-us] Parks, again

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

On January 4, 2018 at 6:21:03 PM PST, Bradley White <theangrytomato at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I don't think the title
>> given to a piece of land should necessarily have bearing on the data
>> representation, in the same way "Hampstead Heath" doesn't get
>> "natural=heath" just because it's in the name.

I forgot to make this point in my previous post.  The British English convention of calling a (sometimes municipal) park-like area "Hampstead Heath" being explicitly stated as a different semantic than what OSM tags "natural=heath" is an important distinction to make, and I'm glad our wiki does so.

However, by way of contrast, something called "Park" generally IS a park:  I seldom, if ever, find an exception to this.  As long as that is true (and contrasts sharply with "heath" as you and our wiki remind us), I'll continue to tag something named "Park" with leisure=park.  Yes, sometimes I'll use leisure=nature_reserve, but guess what?  That's because it's name contains "Nature Reserve" or "Open Space Reserve" or some other set of English words that map directly onto the tag "leisure=nature_reserve."

So, while it doesn't NECESSARILY have bearing, I am an intelligent enough user of language (and its derived semantics) to "properly" map these semantics to specific syntax tags in OSM.  All OSM volunteers must do at least a little bit of this, and we can even talk about the more subtle aspects of doing so in a forum like talk-us.

Our tag of park, I continue to assert most assiduously, is vast and elastic.  We might improve it with a rich schema, but until then, it is correct to tag park entries with this tag.

SteveA
California