[OSM-talk] Some more shops and amenities for the map features page ...

[David Earl]

On 20/12/2008 18:51, Dermot McNally wrote:
> 2008/12/20 David Earl <david at frankieandshadow.com>:
> 
>> But it's only a name. Now its there, why not just go with the flow?
> 
> To go with the flow wouldn't be tragic. Thousands of German mappers
> have to tolerate the fact that we don't use highway=autobahn. But in
> this instance, we have something like 26% doctor, so there seems to be
> a need to retag anyway. Doing so in a way that makes it easier for
> mappers to remember the schema will help.
> 
> For me, "dentist" makes sense. So does "doctor". So does "surgery" or
> "medical_practice", if we want to acknowledge that there may be more
> than one medical professional on site. But "doctors" seems to be a
> poor fit.


I just do what the page says. I couldn't care less what the actual words 
are. I know lots of people get exercised by what the tags should be 
called and what category they're in, but when we have no means to 
standardise them, and there is is a significant proportion of the OSM 
community who don't want any kind of standardisation I find them rather 
sterile arguments because people will do whatever they like, or if 
rendered, what looks good.

What I really don't like is the manual changing under my feet just 
because there is an aesthetic preference for one word over another when 
there is no substantive reason to change. But again since we don't have 
any standards, we all have to work by making maps out of jelly (that's 
"jello" for our US participants, not "jam", so should that be map=jello 
or map=jelly - only one way to find out...).

David