[OSM-talk] barrier=gate, run a script?

[Andy Allan]

On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 9:49 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> sergio sevillano wrote:
>> the key:barrier has been approved and thus the highway=gate now belongs
>> to barrier
>> *barrier=gate *
>>
>> shall we run a script to do this?
>
> No, because this would break existing rendering. First make sure the new
> tag is supported by the majority of renderers - otherwise it will look
> to people as if the gates had been removed because they're suddenly not
> on the map any more.

And remember that "renderers" aren't just the main ones that show map
tiles, there's lots of other ones for mobile devices including e.g.
mkgmap, which may or may not need to be modified. Also any editor
presets (all the editors, not just JOSM), and of course the multitude
of routing programs.

Please remember that not all users of OSM data are internal to the
project any more, so external users of the data may not be constantly
working on keeping their tag sets up to date. So allow a long overlap
period. It should also be that the vast majority of new tags are using
the new scheme, since it doesn't matter how many people "vote" on
proposals, there's literally orders of magnitude more people actually
inputting data and it's they who are more important when deciding
which tags to "deprecate".


Cheers,
Andy

Who dislikes the concept of "deprecating" tags almost as much as
people automatically changing thousands of tags two days after a
self-selected cabal think that the voting system is the be all and end
all...