IMO it's better to add something clear than to shoehorn something into a
generic tag. Especially if you end up with compound values. OK so they
could be parsed, but it's just making work (both processing and
maintaining). Better to have something unambiguous like national_rail=yes
and london_underground=yes.

On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 4:35 AM, AJ Ashton <aj.ash...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Richard & everyone,
>
> This started off simply as an effort to improve our display London
> Underground stations using existing OSM data, but was scope-creeped
> into much more and apparently we messed up.
>
> We've found that the lack of familiar London Underground and National
> Rail icons is a particularly strong sticking point with people who
> would otherwise happily switch to OSM, which is partly why we chose to
> focus on it. The tagging for stations is not so consistent, and my
> blog post goes into details about how we attempt to account for this
> as much as possible at the import & rendering stages. However certain
> inconsistencies seemed simple enough to just fix in OSM.
>
> We saw network=National Rail tags already in use at various stations
> and didn't think continuing to use them would be an issue. The
> imports/mechanical edits policies didn't come to my mind because we
> started with just a handful of edits. Even though this obviously ended
> up turning into many more, I thought that things were being done quite
> manually and carefully. There were no scripts or bots used, but the
> error the Craig points out looks like the result of a very bulk and
> incorrect copy/paste (or something) so clearly there were problems
> here.
>
> > ... something that might seem simple
> > from afar actually turns out to be a bit more nuanced, but by giving
> careful
> > consideration to the nuances, we're making what is hands-down the best
> map
> > of the world. I hope we can have a similarly useful conversation about
> the
> > stations too.
>
> I guess our excitement to make awesome maps tripped us up here.
> Richard pointed out specifically that 'the "network=National Rail" tag
> is of debatable value and relevance'. I'm curious about the details of
> why.
>
> We just went with what seemed to be an established tagging system (but
> I guess is actually not). I am interested to hear tagging ideas that
> would be both correct and useful for rendering a map with appropriate
> icon styles.
>
> AJ @ MapBox
>
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>
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