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

[David Earl]

On 20/10/2008 18:27, Matthias Julius wrote:
> "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.

And ditto vice-versa: even if a script is run to update, someone unaware 
of the change will come along and add the old tag.

If I were a tool author (which I am, of course, but namefinder is not 
interested in gates; however the same principle applies to any 
"deprecated" tag), for a widely used tag I would feel I needed leave the 
old one in indefinitely for backward compatibility in the absence of any 
enforceable standards.

David