OK, the mapper in question did not reply, but silently removed the tags.
This leaves me none the wiser as to the more widespread usage of this tag.
Looking closer at the data, it appears that "man_made=survey_point" is
very often added to prominent objects, particularly towers, masts and
lighthouses. Could it be that some survey agencies use these objects as
triangulation points? If so, it raises a couple of issues:
1. The "man_made" key should refer to the structure, not its usage.
2. The drift towards micro-mapping means that such objects, originally
mapped as nodes, get converted to plan outlines and the tags moved to
that closed way. If the intent of the "survey_point" mapper was to set a
lat/lon positional reference, then that scheme is undone.
Might it not be appropriate to add a note in the Wiki page for this tag
that it should not be added it to existing objects, but to always create
a separate node?
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