[OSM-talk] barrier=gate

[David Earl]

On 10/11/2008 11:18, Marc Schütz wrote:
>> Gerald A wrote:
>>> Renderers should be following the project. If the community
>>> decides one tag over the other, or both, or even neither, the
>>> renders will catch up eventually.
>> But the community has decided with a vote of 1:10 to use
>> highway=barrier rather than barrier=gate.
> 
> It has not. There may be ten times more highway=gate in the DB than
> barrier=gate, but what percentage of the community that is aware of
> the new tags actually prefers the old tags when adding new objects?
> You'd have to watch the relative frequency of the two tags over time
> to see, which one is growing, and therefore, on which the community
> has decided.

It's a chicken and egg though. I really don't care what what the words I 
have to type to get a gate are, but if the renderers don't support the 
new tag I'll be inclined to carry on using the old one (since there is 
no advantage in using the new one, and the old one is built in to my 
fingers). Indeed, if the renderers don't actually drop support for the 
old one, I can't see any particular reason to change - the new tag 
doesn't do anything extra, it's just a self-selected group of people's 
preference for one word instead of another.

And so long as I or others continue to use the old one, what incentive 
is there for the renderers to switch?

David