[OSM-talk] "Second decade" visions

[Warin]

On 11/03/2015 9:53 AM, Daniel Koć wrote:
>
> 4. Redesigning some key tagging schemes
>
> I think that will be one of the hardest think to change, but while tag 
> crafting is mostly a grassroot process, we need to rethink some of 
> them in a more systematic way.
>
> For example amenity=school should be really landuse=school (if not 
> used just for the building), landcover namespace should arise (so on 
> the landuse=park we can see green space only when there's a grass 
> actually, not on the whole this area), maybe some nature/man_made 
> tagging should be replaced by terrain namespace... That's not 
> important what exactly should be (re)designed from top to bottom this 
> time, but once you have the needed level of expertise, you can make 
> new implementation better instead of just patching the original one.
>
> We also have a lot detailed objects which are not always clearly 
> defined and we should try more "cascading" approach, like 
> "amenity=fast_food" => "amenity=food+amenity_food_type=fast_food" (or 
> something alike). That way we can have "Here is food!" label without 
> forcing mapper to distinguish if he's not really sure.
>
> I expect there will be strong reaction against using "top-down 
> committee" methodology, but some well-known problems with our ontology 
> architecture will never go away if we try to change it tag-for-tag. Of 
> course that is true only for this class of problems - most new schemes 
> will still be best when created ad hoc and then used by more and more 
> mappers.

There needs to be a guide as to the tagging scheme/system/philosophy.

  You use the example of fast food... to me that is a shop .. so rather 
than amenity= it should be shop= ... thus 'a place that sells a product' 
should precede the selection of 'amenity=' ?

I'll add the problem of waste .. I believe there needs to be a top level 
tag of waste= ... at the same level as amenity= etc ..

In the long term there needs to be a good understanding of what 
scheme/system/philosophy is to be used, and it needs to be Documented 
with a capital D. If that is done by a committe or a loose group the 
doucumentation still needs to be done .. and done before some redefining 
tags if an over all scheme/system/philosophy is too succeed.