[OSM-talk] [Tagging] Waterway direction

John F. Eldredge john at jfeldredge.com
Wed Sep 1 23:42:37 BST 2010


Barrier=ditch would be logical for a ditch that is intended to keep people or animals out, but is not intended for drainage.  Examples would be a dry moat around a castle, or a ha-ha (a dry trench used as a livestock barrier).

-------Original Email-------
Subject :Re: [Tagging] Waterway direction
From  :mailto:lists at mail.atownsend.org.uk
Date  :Wed Sep 01 16:13:31 America/Chicago 2010


  On 01/09/2010 21:42, Anthony wrote:
> (While looking at this I also noticed we have barrier=ditch and
> waterway=ditch.  That also sucks, unless there's some distinction
> between the two.

Presumably that's different wiki editors arriving at the same feature
from different angles?  I'd say there were exactly the same thing.
Where I grew up "ditch" was the generic word for a semi-natural or
artificial waterway much smaller than a river, often used as a field
boundary.  Named ditches there are often called "Xxx Dike" (same root
word as "ditch" I suspect)

> Which is
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:IMG_6784.JPG supposed to be?)
>
>

Personally I'd map it as either waterway=stream or waterway=drain,
depending on how far it is along the line between natural feature that's
been widened or culverted at one end (stream) or entirely artifical
feature dug to drain line (drain).  I wouldn't use barrier=ditch because
(at least as of last year) hardly anyone else does -
http://osmdoc.com/en/tag/barrier/ditch .


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-- 
John F. Eldredge -- john at jfeldredge.com
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria


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