My take on it: Wearing my data consumer's hat:
For most purposes, I care about "this ground is covered with water". 'natural=water' is the main thing to look for, but I also have to look for 'landuse=reservoir' and several other things that I can't be bothered to look up at the moment. I have to look for all those things, so I don't really care all that much which one is in use. The chief problem with both of these tags is that even for the rough-level mapping, I have to examine 'water=*' or 'reservior_type=*' to find that the contained substance is, in fact, water and not sewage or mine tailings. In any case, both uses are widespread. I'm going to need to interpret both for the foreseeable future. I can cope with synonyms. I'm not going to lobby strongly for one or the other. Wearing my mapper's hat: 'natural=water' wins. I can see that there's water there. The big counterargument that I've heard, other than that 'landuse=reservoir' has been the predominant tagging, is that a reservoir isn't "natural" water. But in our complex, human- (and beaver-) sculpted environment, what is natural? Many of the reservoirs that I've encountered have natural lakes and ponds underneath, and simply have had their water raised. It seems to me that by the thinking of those who think that 'natural' means "totally untouched by humans", that I'd actually be required to do the research about where the old shoreline lay before humans raised the water, and divide the reservoir into an inner 'natural=water' and an outer 'landuse=reservoir' - which is an example of the tagging position that I abhor. I shouldn't have to do historical research in order to map something that I can directly observe with my own eyes. In fact, with some of the ponds I've mapped, I've not troubled (or been able to) access the outlet to find out what controls the water level. I don't know whether they are tarns, dolines, beaver ponds, or man-made ponds created for logging until I can find out where the water goes when it leaves. (I hike in glaciated karst; the landforms are complex.) But I can see at a glance, "there's water here," whether glaciers, limestone, beavers or humans put it there. That should be enough to map it. If someone else feels strongly enough about it to change something that I've mapped as 'natural=water' to 'landuse=reservoir', well, I know that I have to accept that as a synonym. so it's not going to harm me as a data consumer. I'm not going to change it back. But I'm not going to accept that the original tagging was "incorrect" or "deprecated". I mapped what I saw. You can go there and see it too. To continue the classification of waterbodies, this argument to me is a tempest in a teapot. -- 73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin
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