[OSM-talk] contact: tags

[Bryce Nesbitt]

On Sun, May 3, 2015 at 1:25 PM, Andrew MacKinnon <andrewpmk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Someone
> attempted an undiscussed mechanical edit of this in the past and got
> reverted. Similar examples are power=sub_station, power=station,
> oneway=true, oneway=1, oneway=-1, etc. There tends to be a widespread dislike of large-scale mechanical edits among the OSM administrators so I don't want to do that.


Yes, an undiscussed edit will be pounced on like raw meat by a hungry tiger.

A discussed edit is very different.
I recently completed a 250,000+ node mechanical edit.  The process of
gaining consensus was tedious and lengthy, but it happened, and the
edits were not reverted.  I did another with 1000 nodes, consolidating
a dozen diverse tagging styles.  That also is holding without revert.

Proper mechanical edits have tremendous benefits for data consumers.
There are many good reasons to do them, but carefully, and with the
community on board.