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

Matthias Julius lists at julius-net.net
Mon Oct 20 18:27:45 BST 2008


"Dave Stubbs" <osm.list at randomjunk.co.uk> writes:

> The real question to ask here is what the "clean-up" is meant to
> achieve? Especially when the new tag does not really interfere with
> the old tag, what does forcibly removing the old tag actually get you?
> Perhaps a cleaner data model, or a smaller planet dump, but only in
> the extreme case where you actually succeed. And are these worth the
> instant breakage of tools you have nothing to do with?

Unless these tools are intended to work on only a limited subset of
the data they will break as soon as someone enters some data under the
new tagging scheme.  I don't think it is any better if a tool misses
half the gates in an area because they are tagged differently.

If a tool suddenly does not show gates anymore its users can notify
the author.  It can go undetected for a long time if a tool just
ignores new gates.

So, I would argue for a grace period after which tools are "expected"
to support the new tag, and then a depreciation period after which
tools "may" drop support for the old tag.

(The quote marks are because OSM is in no position to prescribe to
tool authors what to support and Map Features is a recommendation only
anyway.)

Matthias




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