>From an IT perspective we should be keeping form and function separate.
There are two facts here: 

1) the altitude of that point is 14505 ft - it is what it is, whatever
units you use. Saying the altitude is 4421.124m is also correct. The
value needs a number and a unit, in an agreed format. It doesn't have to
be human-readable (although that helps), but it must be
computer-parsable. The representation of the both the number and the
unit are for "internal use" and are expected to be formatted in some way
before being presented to a human (decimal points/thousands separators
for example). 

2) there is a sign that reads "14,505 feet" - human-readable and
recognisable. 

It is trying to conflate these two things that makes life so complicated
in OSM. Even street name signs suffer from this - streets are called
whatever the authority says they are called. If there is a sign saying
something else, then there are two facts here, both equally valid but
from different perspectives. 

It's a shame we don't have any discussion about OSM information
modelling. I could start some, but because that would inevitably lead to
some concept of "right" and "wrong" ways of tagging, I will save my
energy for more productive things. 

//colin 

On 2015-04-03 13:18, Warin wrote: 

> On 3/04/2015 8:33 PM, Bryce Nesbitt wrote: 
> 
> On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 2:14 AM, Warin <[email protected]> wrote:
> ele= only takes meters as a unit .. the reason states is that "Renderers have 
> no way of doing conversions on the fly to local units while creating image 
> tiles" ... and this is an 'approved' tag. 
> That's mapping for the rendering's back-end SQL database.

 Not saying it is good... but that is what is written in the wiki. 

> If I'm staring at a sign that says "14,505 feet", that's certainly how I want 
> to tag it.
 Agreed!!!!

 Conversions should be done remotely rather than by a tired mapper at
14,505 feet! And are best done by a tried and tested code. 

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