Currently place=locality is main in the database from imports, and it is also used as a way to tag a feature which is not currently rendered by most map renders so that the name will show.
Since place=locality was originally defined as "a named place that has no population" it's easy to see how this (mis)use came about. There are certainly places that really should be tagged place=locality. The wiki mentions places that used to have a population, but are not longer inhabited; eg "ghost towns" and railway junctions in the USA. This features are often still shown on other maps, and may still have a sign that shows the location, but even if they are only know by local knowledge they may be useful for orientation. For example, the locations of old mining camps by the river were still used by fire fighters and police to specify locations of incidents in my home area in rural California. See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:place=locality What we need is a way to distinguish the correctly-tagged features and those that are double-tagging for rendering. I would suggest that a subtag such as "locality=*" could be useful. https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/locality#values This tag is already used 65,000 times, but actually on boundaries; it was used for an import in Ireland with the values locality=townland and locality=subtownland. (These seem to be incorrect usages, because townlands seem to be populated places) Besides the import, it's been used 26 times with locality=junction (which could also be tagged railway=junction https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:railway%3Djunction)? The other values look incorrect; they are all populated places, or backwards (locality=place). So I think the key "locality=*" could be used to specify the type of locality. This would allow database users to decide which localities to render, out of the 1.3 million The most important value would be one for a locality that is a former populated place but no longer has a population. Ideas for the value? locality=ghost_town seems too American locality=formerly_inhabited could work but is rather wordy locality=abandoned_farm or =abandoned_hamlet might work? Are there other types of valid localities which cannot be better described with a different tag, other than former inhabited places? -Joseph _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
