Re: is water=* tag needed? On Thu, Nov 12, 2020 at 9:36 AM Brian M. Sperlongano <zelonew...@gmail.com> wrote: > "Is a water= tag even needed at all in these cases then? natural=water + name="Foobar Pond" seems to cover it. I'm not sure what specific added information is conveyed by "lake", "pond", or even "lake_pond". It's a natural body of water with a name. If we need tagging to indicate freshwater vs brackish vs saltwater, or depth, or murkiness, those seem like separate tags.
> > > "I think the question here isn't if pond makes sense for data consumers. Mappers are what matters in this case. If there is a little 4 meter pond, mappers will not tag it as a lake because it sounds wrong. So they will probably tag it just natural=water. But then we lose information about if it is a little lake, a reservoir, a fountain or a wastewater dump. That's why we need the pond." So originally all lakes and semi-natural ponds were tagged just natural=water, while reservoirs were landuse=reservoir, retention/detention/infiltration basins were landuse=basin, the area of rivers was mapped with waterway=riverbank. And then, as now leisure=swimming_pool was used for swimming pools, while seas and coastal waters were delimited with natural=coastline ways (as they still are). Salt ponds could be mapped with landuse=salt_pond. This meant that there were separate tags for seas and marine water (all areas outside of the coastline), for natural inland still water (natural=water), man-made still water features (landuse=reservoir / =basin / =salt_pond), and for rivers (waterway=riverbank) - which are natural flowing watercourses. But there wasn't a clear way to map the area of a canal or ditch: an artificial area of flowing water, so the tagging system was missing one ingredient. Some mappers used waterway=riverbank since canals are similar to rivers, while others used natural=water even though this was for lakes. Instead of making a new tag for canals or ditches or drains, its was proposed to just use natural=water for all inland water areas, including rivers, canals, reservoirs, and basins, with the addition of the tag water=* to describe the type of water area. This was somewhat controversial, since it meant mapping man-made watercourses and waterbodies under natural=* but it was approved: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Water_details (Apparently this was already in use in Russia before it was adopted by the global community?) Now the proposal had a couple problems: it suggested water=cove and water=lagoon for areas which are clearly outside of the coastline and part of the marine water system, but in practice this has not happened, natural=bay has been used for these areas instead of natural=water, so the distinction between marine and inland water has remained mostly clear (except in the difficult situation of estuaries). But since water=pond is not clearly defined as natura/semi-natural vs man-made, we have a large number of features where the water=* tag is not providing this information. Since the previous tagging system clearly distinguished natural from man-made water bodies, this would be a loss for database quality. I wish it was possible to just redefine water=pond as "a man-made pond", but since this is not likely to succeed, we should provide clear alternatives. Of course it will remain possible to just use natural=water with no additional tag, if it's not known whether an inland body of still water is man-made or natural. -- Joseph Eisenberg
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