[OSM-talk] Proposed mechanical edit to convert alt_name tags

[Roland Olbricht]

Hello Andrew,

First of all, thank you for discussing the issue.

Let's have a look about the numbers and distribution: For objects that 
carry a ";" within their alt_name tag, we find

nodes: almost 3000
ways: almost 3000
relations: almost 400

(see http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/4ZM and similar)
and in each category they are distributed all over the world.

By contrast, objects that have a key starting with the string 
"alt_name_" exist

nodes: about 40 outside Western Africa
ways: about 50
rels: currently 6

(see http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/4ZL and similar)
and a large number of nodes inside Western Africa.

This underpins the two theses:

1. The solution with ";" is far more established than the solution with 
prefix "alt_name_".

2. It is altogether a sometimes but not often used feature.

The first point means that enforcing an automated edit will embarass 
quite a lot of people or at least require a lot of personal talk. 
Altogether, it is almost for sure a no-go.

If it is really worth to you to spend some hundred hours on it, then the 
next step would be to contact all mappers that have been last editor of 
the object, the editors that have introduced the tag and all editors in 
between. They can tell you which tools may rely on this syntax.

The second point means that you have to expect a problem that often 
harms wiki proposals: It is more likely that people having time to 
discuss general topics will answer than people that have knowledge about 
the tag. Hence, whether the change will or will not cause outrage is 
quite unrelated with the response on this list (or any other 
communication channel, or even a combination of common communication 
channels).

If you don't believe this then please verify that I never have touched 
an object in question, but I do discuss in this thread.

Thus, a far more community-friendly solution than an at least 
controversal mechanical edit would be to just use the "alt_name_" 
prefix. It may annoy other people, but it is then their uphill-battle to 
convince you to change your toolchain. As breaking compatibility is 
deprecated for a good reason, I would ask you to explain then why you 
have chosen this approach. This could be easily explained if their are 
objects that cannot be modeled with the semicolon approach, or if you 
have tools that won't work with the semicolon approach, preferrably for 
more profound reasons than that it is just not implemented.

Altogether I appreciate that you have seeked communication and I would 
like to ask to you to get familiar that multiple approaches to a problem 
may exist in parallel in OpenStreetMap.

Cheers,

Roland