[OSM-talk] keys with multiple values

[Paul Norman]

On 9/12/2014 3:24 PM, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
> To me there's very little semantic value in distinguishing between
> name_2 and alt_name. Even old_name and loc_name arguably don't bring
> much to the table (I do see the nuance, but it doesnt seem to be worth
> the complication). We've got the same problem with the ref tag and
> many others.
I believe with TIGER these were not alternate names, but different 
names, none of which were clearly main or alternates in the data. It's 
one of those things that makes raw TIGER data a pain to work with.

That situation is distinct from when you have a primary name and 
multiple alternate names, although in practice many of the TIGER cases 
had a primary name, or one of the alternate names wasn't really a name.

TIGER is also not where to look to for good tagging practices. For 
various reasons, there were numerous problems with the tagging.