[OSM-talk] Mapnik rendering labels for unrecognised tags

[Anthony]

On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 9:22 PM, Ian Sergeant <isergean at hih.com.au> wrote:
>
> Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote on 30/08/2011 11:14:32 AM:
>
>> The same mechanism is used for Yahoo, Bing etc coverage. Yes, it's
>> debatable whether meta-objects should be stored in the OSM database,
>> but that debate would also extend to meta-tags (note=*, fixme=*)

That's pretty different, or at least potentially so.  A note=* or
fixme=* tag, at least in the way I've used them and seen them used, is
just a human-readable rather than machine-readable description of
something in the real world.

> When I encounter these "meta" ways/nodes with a name tag, I always change it
> to a note tag.  It is more aligned with a annotation than with a named
> object.

+1.  While I'd rather see these objects go away altogether, I think a
tag of "name=Melbourne;Geelong;South-Central NSW Area;Central Victoria
Area" on a closed way implies that this closed way represents an area
called "Melbourne;Geelong;South-Central NSW Area;Central Victoria
Area".

I'm not sure boundary=* is appropriate either, as this is not a
political or governmental or pseudo-governmental division, though
maybe I'm just not aware of how broadly that tag is used.