Hello Andrew,
First of all, thank you for discussing the issue.
Let's have a look about the numbers and distribution: For objects that
carry a ";" within their alt_name tag, we find
nodes: almost 3000
ways: almost 3000
relations: almost 400
(see http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/4ZM and similar)
and in each category they are distributed all over the world.
By contrast, objects that have a key starting with the string
"alt_name_" exist
nodes: about 40 outside Western Africa
ways: about 50
rels: currently 6
(see http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/4ZL and similar)
and a large number of nodes inside Western Africa.
This underpins the two theses:
1. The solution with ";" is far more established than the solution with
prefix "alt_name_".
2. It is altogether a sometimes but not often used feature.
The first point means that enforcing an automated edit will embarass
quite a lot of people or at least require a lot of personal talk.
Altogether, it is almost for sure a no-go.
If it is really worth to you to spend some hundred hours on it, then the
next step would be to contact all mappers that have been last editor of
the object, the editors that have introduced the tag and all editors in
between. They can tell you which tools may rely on this syntax.
The second point means that you have to expect a problem that often
harms wiki proposals: It is more likely that people having time to
discuss general topics will answer than people that have knowledge about
the tag. Hence, whether the change will or will not cause outrage is
quite unrelated with the response on this list (or any other
communication channel, or even a combination of common communication
channels).
If you don't believe this then please verify that I never have touched
an object in question, but I do discuss in this thread.
Thus, a far more community-friendly solution than an at least
controversal mechanical edit would be to just use the "alt_name_"
prefix. It may annoy other people, but it is then their uphill-battle to
convince you to change your toolchain. As breaking compatibility is
deprecated for a good reason, I would ask you to explain then why you
have chosen this approach. This could be easily explained if their are
objects that cannot be modeled with the semicolon approach, or if you
have tools that won't work with the semicolon approach, preferrably for
more profound reasons than that it is just not implemented.
Altogether I appreciate that you have seeked communication and I would
like to ask to you to get familiar that multiple approaches to a problem
may exist in parallel in OpenStreetMap.
Cheers,
Roland
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