Hi, As one of the originators of this thread I'd like to second that the Wiki is important. It's not only a documentation tool but also a communication. We all need patience with Wikis and it's curation and users - like we e.g. have patience with when we're discussing things about iD presets or iD functionality (like Copy&Paste which remained unimplemented since 2013 - hint to Bryan :-))
In addition I'd like to draw your attention to my three points expressed in my original thread entitled "Values in namespaces/prefixes/suffixes Considered Harmful - Or: Stop over-namespacing and prefix-fooling". IMHO we're on a critical crossroad because of the new-style namespaces (also favored by the unique multiCombo functionality in iD among others): 1. How to combine concepts? 2. How to group (sub-)tags? 3. How to handle multiple values? Namespaces are an attempt to all these. But IMHO for handling groups (2), there's the Wiki (!) - and Presets. And for handling multiple values (3) I'd still favor semi-colon separated as long as possible. As said, the currently growing over-namespacing and prefix-fooling is detrimental to the OSM schema and turns key/value ad absurdum. Regarding (2), namespaces are not meant to group values, but to group attributes/keys! And regarding (3), pseudo-namespaces are not stored in one bit, in contrary: those long tag tag strings blow up e.g. the attribute storage in Vector Tiles unnecessarily. I've quickly analyzed Switzerland and found e.g. following pseudo-namespaces containing significant amount of Upper-Case keys (which is a smell of being values smuggled in keys, since keys should be lower or unsiginificant case): service:* but also currency;*, payment:* and fuel:*. Here once again some considerations. Instead of this "a hodgepodge of different ways of tagging and potential for 100s of keys" as Simon said: motorcycle:tyres=yes service:tyres:car=yes service:bicycle:tyres=yes payment:visa=yes payment:notes=yes payment:cash:CHF=yes All of the above could or should be this: sells=tyres:motorcycle;tyres:cars;tyres:bicycle payment=visa;notes;cash:CHF And as a last comment: The addr-namespace is a good example of namespacing! addr:city=Timbuktu addr:housenumber=1 addr:postcode=111 addr:street=Main Street But namespacing is not the only means we have to group tags: we also have Presets and Wikis documentation! :Stefan Am Do., 10. Jan. 2019 um 00:43 Uhr schrieb Warin <61sundow...@gmail.com>: > > On 10/01/19 10:13, Tobias Knerr wrote: > > On 07.01.19 16:12, Bryan Housel wrote: > > > >> I encourage everyone to just disregard everything that’s on the wiki and > >> go by what taginfo says as far as how the tags are used and what the > >> accepted values are. > > The wiki is an invaluable source for understanding OSM tagging, and I > > use it all the time during mapping and when coding software that works > > with OSM data. > > > > Taginfo is an awesome resource as well, and I use it almost daily, but > > it cannot fully replace the wiki. It tells you that foo=bar has been > > used thousands of times, but it doesn't tell you what that tag means¹. > > It also doesn't tell you about the conventions for its use (default > > values, directionality, lots of other essential details). Ultimately, > > Taginfo isn't documentation – the wiki is. > > +1. > > Taginfo does not tell me what landuse=clearing is. It only tells me there is > some of use of it. > > There is no wiki page on it so there is no help there. > > The next thing to do is contact the mappers.. tried that .. one response told > me to go to another channel - did that, nothing worth while. > > Contact a mapper .. no response there either ... > Best I can do then is use my brain to think about the words and the mapping > context to come up with what I think they meant by it. > My conclusion is - if it is not documented on the wiki .. it does not exist. > > > > > > Besides documenting current tagging practice, the wiki is also a useful > > tool for coordinating and spreading new ideas (even though the specifics > > of the process can be controversial at times). If you're not a software > > developer or one of a few highly respected community members, > > discussions on community channels and wiki proposals are pretty much > > your only good options to make your genius tagging idea known to the > > world. Without this first step, that idea is unlikely to get enough > > traction to even show up in Taginfo to a meaningful extent: Using the > > tag yourself only gets you so far. > > The wiki also help differentiate between things that are close in appearance > to the casual mapper. > > Things like a netball court can be mapped as a basketball court, until you > can see the difference and that is on OSM wiki pages. > > > > > For all these reasons, I consider the wiki a key asset to our project. > > As a result, I spend a lot of time improving it, as do many other > > community members. It hurts to see that some developers of core OSM > > infrastructure seemingly value these contributions so little. To me, > > people discussing and documenting our data model are a vital part of our > > community. So are software developers, of course! It's my belief that > > the project can only thrive if there's mutual respect between these groups. > > > > Tobias > > > > > > ¹ Taginfo actually does provide a definition, but that's because it > > extracts them from wiki pages. > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Tagging mailing list > Tagging@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging