[OSM-talk] OpenRailwayMap Electrification Status vs tag electrification=no

[Greg Troxel]

[top posting and incorrect quoting repaired]

Pierre Béland via talk <talk at openstreetmap.org> writes:

>  Le jeudi 24 février 2022, 17 h 47 min 35 s UTC−5, Michael Reichert <osm-ml at michreichert.de> a écrit :  

>> Am 24.02.22 um 18:11 schrieb Jonathan J. Bittner:
>>> Some folks have removed my 'abandoned:railway=rail' tags as being
>>> "redundant" to 'railway=abandoned' when the abandoned:railway tag indicates
>>> whether an abandoned line was a rail line, tram line/trolley line, light
>>> rail, narrow gauge line, etc.  It also affects the rendering priority of
>>> OpenRailwayMap due to the high density of ambiguously tagged abandoned tram
>>> lines in certain areas.
>>
>> I use the term "vandalism" carefully but this is vandalism.
>>
>> Best regards
>>
>> Michael

> Michael, 
>
> I dont know what type of contributor you are.  Myself, I did
> contribute a lot to OSM in various ways and am an not the type of
> contributor that systematically go and revise others contributions,
> imposing systematically tagging orthodoxy.
>
> Please explain why you use such wording, or the best excuse your behavior.

> Pierre 


I really do not understand where Pierre is coming from.  Michael's
statement is an entirely reasonable, mainstream opinion.  Removing other
people's valid work counts as vandalism.

I think it's wrong for an OSM contributor to remove tags when:

  they were added by hand by another mapper

  they are at least slightly reasonable, or more so

  the person doing the removal is acting on the basis of a non-consensus
  opinion about what should and should not be mapped


In the case of abandoned:railway=rail, that's not something I was
familiar with, but it seems obviously wrong to remove it.

I will change name=Foo to some other tag when I am local and it is
really clear that Foo is not a name, but I will not delete data, even if
I think the data is more detailed than what I care about.

OSM is full of people with an interest in details of various kinds, to
the extent that is baffling to the rest of us.  Some people are into
tagging the number of conductors on power lines, others care if
bathrooms are wheelchair accessible, and some care how wide hiking paths
are.  Those are all fine things map, and OSM is stronger because many
people map different things.  To make that work we all have to be
accepting of information in the database that we don't personally find
that interesting.
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