Hi there,

Not sure if this is the right place for this philosophical question. But 
starting from the comment of Brycenesbitt to my apartment-proposal "I feel this 
will become yet another piece of unmaintanable data in OSM." and several 
comments I got on my boat_sharing proposal "just use it, don't go through 
proposal process" I think it's a important question. What do we define tags for?

A) OSM is just a base layer
We tag just for general features of the landscape, and maybe roads. This will 
make a beautiful map, which then can be used as a base layer, e.g. for a 
holiday-apartment renting agency, which than can render all there apartments 
from their own private database as an overlay on OSM base layer.
=> this will mean, "we" do not have to maintain the apartment info, nor has the 
provider to bother with OSM. This is much easier. But means that the 
information is only avaible on the agencies website, and thus there will be 
million places I have to look for the info.

B) OSM as a fully featured geobased information system
We see of OSM a a standalone, fully featured geobased information system. I can 
take the map in my pocket (like on the iPhone App "PocketEarth", or "OsmAnd"), 
and will everywhere have any kind of information. I'm driving through a 
village, I like it, and I want to stay. So, where are the next nice 
holiday-apartments around me?
Of course, this only works, if the data is maintained and current. But: I want 
OSM to get important enough that every service provider offering a service to a 
wide enough public is just forced in his own interest to publish it's data on 
OSM and keep it current.

As a conclusion for us this means: Yes, we need a defined tagging (accepted 
proposal) for tourism=apartment, ifnot, never ever all service providers will 
put their apartment on OSM. And never the Apps like PocketEarth or OsmAnd will 
support to render it.
I was advised by several persons that I should just use "tourism=boat_sharing", 
and not bother about going through a proposal and voting process. BUT: I asked 
OsmAnd to render the tag, and the answer was - quite understandable: "Only 
officially supported tags will be rendered". There we are again with the well 
know snake which bites it's tail: No data - no rendering. No rendering, nobody 
collects data or publishes it on OSM.
My answer to this would be: make a reasonable, understandable, clear and clean 
tagging scheme, discuss it, vote it, document it. If done properly, the data 
will come and the rendering as well.

Please, what is your vision of OSM? A or B?

If A, I will stop bothering about tourism=apartment, amenity=boat_sharing, or 
amenity=nursery, since this are all "service informations" you can argue you 
can find somewhere else ...
But if it's B), then we need all that to make OSM the best, most complete and 
inevitable geobased information system.

Thanks for your comments, and yes, I reopened the boat_sharing proposal for 
voting, just in case somebody wants to support me!!!

Have a nice week-end,

Nounours77

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/boat_sharing
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/apartment

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