[OSM-talk] golf course marking

[David Earl]

On 08/05/2008 11:43, Erik Johansson wrote:
> On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 11:32 PM, Shaun McDonald
> <shaun at shaunmcdonald.me.uk> wrote:
>>  If you don't think that brownfield and greenfield are good tags then don't
>> use them.
> 
> Brownfield is a field that is brown, that means brown grass. So large
> areas of grass that are brown most of the year. That's the first think
>  I thought of apparently I'm not alone in this. Therefore I think you
> should rethink its usage (just ~350 ways), and especially its
> inclusion in Potlatch auto complete dictionary.
> 
> 
>>> why we're not using right_of_way=motorway|primary|cycleway|footway|
> 
> What does highway mean? To me it  used to mean a big motorway with
> lots of cars, now my definition of highway is "tag used by OSM to
> describe ways". So even Blackadder saved us from the class and type
> tags, it's not the most easy tag name to understand, even though it's
> one tag most people have used.

It really, really doesn't matter what the names of tags are for how the 
system works. They might as well be wibble=wobble for the difference it 
makes. They are useful as memory joggers, but really no more. So long as 
the meaning is understood (i.e. written down), just use it as defined 
and stop worrying about it.

However, FWIW, brownfield and greenfield arose because they are widely 
used terms in the UK to describe land that is a target for builders to 
build on, either previous developed or undeveloped land respectively. 
They're in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownfield_land and 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_land

And one of the Oxford English Dictionary definitions of highway is "Any 
track well-beaten or regularly traversed by animals or things" which 
sums it up pretty well IMO. (Another is "especially a main or principal 
road ...").

Personally I think the attempts to group tags causes more arguments than 
it is worth. If we had just objects with a type (e.g. "school" or 
"secondary_road") which then had properties (ref=B1302, name=High 
Street), we'd spend less time arguing about it an more getting on with 
the job. Not that I'm proposing we change it now, BTW.

I think you just need to accept this is the wording people have come up 
with and get on with the job, and stop agonising about it.

I'm sure in due course we'll get language specific ways of adding data, 
in which case the underlying name of the tag will be irrelevant anyway.

David