[OSM-talk] Tagging climbing routes and scrambles

[Alan Millar]

> I can say from my experience of teaching IT concepts to very smart
> people (i.e. until recently I was an IT support manager at a large
> uni) that this namespacing stuff is a step too far for most people.

I can say from my experience that, as one of those sort of people, trying
to learn all about XML namespaces really makes my head hurt.  So I can
agree with that sentiment.

However, I can also say that I can readily understand that the tags name
and name_1 are different but equally valid for their use, and by extension
I could easily accept that tag names length and climbing:length are
different but valid for their own uses too.  I don't have to understand
namespaces in order to follow the instructions "tag climbing lengths with
climbing:length, because that's the accepted convention".  Heck, I'm
fairly smart, but OSM has a big learning curve to really understand it, so
most everything I do is based on looking for the existing accepted
convention.

I think that people don't need to understand namespaces to be able to use
a proscribed tag with a colon in it, if it is presented as just another
tag.

Of course, climbing_length would work just as well, by this measure.

- Alan