[OSM-talk] OSM Tagging for Haiti: Humanitarian Data Models in support of OSM tagging for Haiti EQ

Jean-Marc Liotier jm at liotier.org
Sat Jan 16 08:59:37 GMT 2010


Micha Ruh wrote:
> 2010/1/16 Jean-Marc Liotier <jm at liotier.org <mailto:jm at liotier.org>>
>
>     I tried to
>     replace "building=collapsed" with "earthquake:damage=collapsed_building"
> 
> Please don't, it's useless, if not harmful.
> 
> Why do you want to replace a simple, understandable, well established,
> broadly supported tag with something THAT complicated?
>
> It's ok, that another tag with the same meaning exists due to imports,
> but please DO NOT change well known and used tags with another one
> coming from an import.
> 
> Especially not when the new tag is 35 chars long. Try editing that in
> potlatch.

Take a look at tagstats :

tag			value			uses	node	way
building		collapsed		1,045	747	298
earthquake:damage	collapsed_building	1,473	1,465	8

We have two tags to describe the same thing. One is apparently more
widespread, more conformant to published standards and semantically
superior.

What do others think ? Is tag length such an issue ? Doesnt
autocompletion solve the problem of tag length ? Is it desirable to
standardize ? Isn't it harmful to have two tags to describe the same
thing ? Is the value of harmonization inferior to the value of not
disturbing habits taken in the last few days ? Do we have past
experience or a policy for such things ?





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