Just contributing another data point on vocabulary… I am a native English speaker from Ohio, USA. I have been aware of the term "potable" for many years, probably since asking what it meant after seeing a water source labeled "non-potable". I have seen that warning on taps in public parks, and on many trucks and railcars. On the other hand, I'd never heard of a "trunk road" before joining OSM. I still don't know any objective way to tell the difference between trunk, primary, secondary, tertiary, and unclassified roads, and I'm amazed there aren't rampant edit wars over those distinctions. I think it's silly that "unclassified road" is in fact a specific road classification. I'd never heard of a "weir" before joining OSM, desptie the existence of several in my home area.
That turned into a bit of an off-topic rant, didn't it? On Jul 12, 2012 8:14 PM, "Andrew Errington" <erringt...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 10:46 PM, Janko Mihelić <jan...@gmail.com> wrote: > > 2012/7/12 Andrew Errington <erringt...@gmail.com> > >> > >> Can we introduce "potable=yes/no" and migrate both of those tags to it > >> over > >> time? > > > > > > I don't know if this is for consideration, but the word "potable" is not > > very known outside english speaking countries (and maybe french, because > it > > comes from a french word). Why not drinkable=official/yes/no? > > I expect that "trunk road", "roundabout", "shelter" and > "archaeological site" are not well known in all languages, however, > the language of OSM is English and "potable" has a very clear meaning. > > Petrol, or gasoline, is drinkable, but you shouldn't do it. > > You could dumb-down the meaning in the dialog that asks "Is this > drinking water?" and set potable yes/no. You can dumb-down the > rendering and make it display 'drinking water' if potable=yes. You > can even translate the tag, so that in the database we use > potable=yes/no, but in the user interface we show the local > equivalent. > > Furthermore it's trivially easy to learn the meaning of a tag by > looking in the wiki. If you don't know what potable=* means then look > it up. If it's not listed in the wiki in your language- add it. > > The language of OSM should be precise. If it's not then people start > inventing tags that have similar, but imprecise meanings, which is > exactly what has happened here. > > Best wishes, > > Andrew > > _______________________________________________ > Tagging mailing list > Tagging@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging >
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