[OSM-talk] OSM Help Ukraine Map

[Colin Smale]

> On 03/11/2022 1:57 AM Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> 
>  
> Hi,
> 
> On 3/11/22 00:15, yo paseopor wrote:
> > a Mapcomplete theme for Ukrainian -name:uk- "translations" of 
> > everything with a name
> 
> A few comments on name tags:
> 
> The "name:xx" tags are not there for translations - they are there to 
> record names that things have in different languages.
> 
> For example, "Pont Neuf" in Paris translates as "New Bridge", but the 
> English name for this bridge is still "Pont Neuf". No speaker of English 
> would say they've been to Paris and they saw the "New Bridge". Anyone, 
> well-meaning as they may be, adding a "name:en=Pont Neuf" to that bridge 
> damages OSM and makes it the laughing stock of those with actual 
> knowledge of the issue.

You are saying there is an assumption that name:xx === name unless otherwise specified?

Firstly name=* is often synthesised out of different languages (in multilingual areas). So we cannot rely on that to be the default value for any name:xx. We have no way of saying that a specific language variant (e.g. name:fr in your example) should be considered default for these purposes.

Secondly although we often work with implicit defaults (such as oneway=no, access=yes) there always exists a way of tagging that explicitly. It is (rightly) "frowned upon" to use this tagging redundantly on a wide scale, but its existence is an essential tool to remove potential ambiguities that may occur.

I therefore disagree with your comments about "name:en=Pont Neuf" damaging OSM and making it the laughing stock. If that is what it is known as in an English-language context, then that is how it should be tagged.