I agree, Paul. The most important things on a wiki page are 1) The description of the tag: what sort of feature or property does it represent and 2) How does one distinguish it from overlapping tags? Both of these should be in the first paragraph / section.
For example, see highway=raceway: (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway=raceway) "A racetrack for motorised racing, eg cars, motorbikes and karts. For cycling, running, horses, greyhounds etc, use leisure=track." highway=unclassified https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dunclassified "The tag highway=unclassified is used for minor public roads typically at the lowest level of the interconnecting grid network. Unclassified roads have lower importance in the road network than {{tag|tertiary}} roads, and are not residential streets or agricultural tracks...." And see the next section https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dunclassified#When_is_this_applicable.3 place=town "Use place=town to identify an important urban centre that is larger than a place=village, smaller than a place=city, and not a place=suburb." leisure=park https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:leisure%3Dpark Second paragraph (first section): "... Such large, national-level ... parks not so designed and manicured, but rather left in a more wild and natural state should not get this tag, instead, use another tag like boundary=national_park; see below." Also see pages like https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:landuse%3Dfarmland and https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:surface which prominently mention the other similar tags in the first section below the description, As these examples show, it's common practice to mention other tags that might be confused with the tag, rather than just listing them in the "See Also" section. "See Also" comes from Wikipedia, where it suggests other articles that might be interesting. It's fine for tags that are not likely to be confused or overlap with the tag in question. But it doesn't work when there are synonyms or tags that appear like they could be used in the same way; these need to be mentioned up-front. -Joseph On 8/26/19, Paul Allen <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 05:35, Warin <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> Traditionally OSMwikis had a section 'See also' where other tags were >> placed. >> >> Placing more and more information at the top of the page confuses people. >> >> The page should first describe the tag and how to use it. This is good >> educational practice. >> >> > But bad documentation practise. I would be very unhappy investing my time > reading what a tag > does only to then get to a section saying "don't use that, use this." That > wastes my time and > loads my (these days, rather limited) brain with conflicting ideas. > > Only once that is done should alternatives and complementary tags be > suggested. >> >> > Complementary tags can, and should, come later. These are optional things > that can be > used to refine the details of the object. Alternative methods of tagging > that are equally > valid, and equally popular (both for approximate values of "equal") can > also come later. > A "This tag is a BAD idea, use that instead" warning SHOULD come first: > don't bother > reading the rest of this page unless you're trying to figure out what some > other mapper > meant by it because it doesn't render, goes against conventions and we have > a far > better (even if "better" means "more popular") alternative. > > -- > Paul > _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
