[OSM-talk] Soccer or football?

[Tom Chance]

Ahoy,

On Tue, 07 Aug 2007 09:09:11 +0100, Mike Collinson <mike at ayeltd.biz> wrote:
> At 12:49 AM 7/08/2007, Brent Easton wrote:
>>I think the preferred method now is:
>>
>>  sport=football
>>  football=australian_rules
>
> That sounds a good approach. Though I do prefer using sport=soccer for
> "the game with two teams kicking a round, black-and-white ball".  No
> ambivalence and widely understood.   That would leave the default for
> "football" in the US to the gridiron American Football and in Australia
to
> any of Australian Rules, Rugby League or Rugby Union (as I understand
it).

Soccer? Ugh, it's the old posh person's term for the beautiful game! The
governing body of football is FIFA, not FISA, and my impression as a
football fan is that it is more widely known as football. But then the
governing body for rugby in the UK is the RFU (Rugby Football Union),
although few people would ever refer to the sport in the UK as "rugby
football".

Personally I'd prefer to just see a proliferation of sport tags. I don't
think there's much point in saying sport=football;football=rugby, because
then the tag "sport=football" becomes meaningless - you really have no idea
what the sport is until you find out what the football tag is because there
are so many totally different sports that would get sport=football. It
would be like having "route=road;road=motorway".

So:

sport=australian_football
sport=gaelic_football
sport=american_football
sport=rugby_union
sport=rugby_league
sport=football/soccer (maybe the latter is clearer to mappers if not to
football fans ;)
etc.

Kind regards,
Tom