[OSM-talk] Several approved features moved to Map_featu res page

[Tom Chance]

Ahoy,

On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 00:46:54 +0000, "Ben Robbins" <ben_robbins_ at hotmail.com> wrote:
> You yourself said in the greenspace wiki disscussion "..."landuse=grass"
> and "name=Village Green" would do the job".  And I think thats correct, except
> I would replace 'landuse' with 'natural'.

Eee, I never ;-)

> Having an extra sorta-predefined tag that only covers 2 other tags is a
> waste, and a mess, I think.

The thing is that my old suggestion of using "name=Village Green" is bad, because I was thinking in terms of how maps would ordinarily present the information. But maybe I would have "Winstanley Green" instead, and all of a sudden it's impossible or difficult for somebody to search for all the village greens in England.

The sorta-predefined tag, as I said, doesn't *just* act as shorthand for two other tags. It adds additional information - it's a patch of grass, it's under UK-common/private/collective ownership, and it's a village green. Oh, and perhaps it's called "Winstanley Green". Mapnik, Osmarender and a whole host of other software and people can make use of this information in any way they like. OSM could become an immensely valuable resource for all kinds of people if it can carry such rich information as well as providing a decent slippy map.

Getting it right in terms of using landuse, natural, leisure, amenity etc. appropriately is really important, and I think you made a very useful distinction between them. Again it feeds into various people's attempts to overhaul or tidy up the current system.

Finally, I see no problem in introducing tags that are specific to the UK, nor do I object to people in other countries creating specific tags for their localities. Maybe it would make sense in the future to filter out these tags, e.g. "select your country -> UK" just shows international and UK tags, filtering out all the German, Canadian, Iranian, etc. tags. But that's a whole other discussion...

Regards,
Tom