[OSM-talk] Tagging hierarchies (was: RFC - lake)

[Martijn van Oosterhout]

On Jan 12, 2008 2:13 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > The world has an infinite diversity and we can't go inventing new tag
> > combinations for all of them. We need to think hierarchically, start
> > with the real defining characteristics: land/sea/road/rail/etc and use
> > subtags for the finegrained stuff.
>
> While this is true, it would not be necessary to stuff the hierarchy
> into the tagging scheme.
>
> Suppose you say something like this (just an example, not meant as a
> suggestion for real-world use):
>
> 1st level: natural=water
> 2nd:       water=standing (as opposed to flowing)
> 3nd:       standing_water=lake (as opposed to puddle, reservoir...)

I'm not sure that's the kind of hierarchy I meant, but I think there
should be a top-level and stuff under that. A base-type + properties.
I'm looking at it from the point of view of a tagger. As far as I'm
concerned the difference between a dam and a reservoir is just a name
and should be reflected in the name tag.

Let's say I'm looking at a satellite image and I see a body of water.
Is it a lake/reservoir/dam/blah? I don't know. Yet the proposed scheme
forces me to choose one with a 2/3 chance of being wrong. Maybe its a
type that has no translation in English, then I'm really SOL.

I suppose what I'm contesting is the statement that natural=water is
deprecated. It covers all the impoartant properties needed for 99% of
users. If somebody cares about details they can add them but I object
to me being forced to care.

Have a nice day,
-- 
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog at gmail.com> http://svana.org/kleptog/