I think JonathanB is spot on here: if the original landuse tags had been landuse=forestry, landuse=farming; landuse=selling_things;landuse=office_drudgery and so on, the widespread confusion between landuse (usually can be denoted by an abstract noun), and natural or landcover (which can usually be described by concrete nouns) may never have arisen.
As it is it is very difficult to get people to separate these concepts: insistence on a single (and if derived from the wiki, often hopelessly misinformed) view of tagging will reduce the richness and usefulness of the data. Achieving consistency is an issue for the cartographer (and in the cases we treat can easily be covered by (landuse='grass' or natural='grass'). On the point about grass is grass. The British National Vegetation Classification<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Vegetation_Classification>recognises 48 different categories of grassland. Most improved grassland in farms and amenity grassland in towns fall into only 1-2 of these altogether. I'm interested in finding examples of the other 46 which should all fall in the natural category (natural=grass or natural=grassland, whatever). However, we are getting away from the point, which is that country wide edits,whether right or wrong are best discussed/notified beforehand. On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 4:34 PM, Jonathan Bennett <jonobenn...@gmail.com>wrote: > On 25/04/2013 16:23, John Baker wrote: > > > > There are always more suitable tags than natural=grass, landuse=grass > > being the most obvious > > Are you claiming that the land *is used for* grass? That the purpose man > has put that piece of land to is just "grass"? surface=grass yes, > landcover=grass maybe (and if it's the "natural" bit you're objecting > to, you might be able to justify man_made=grass) but landuse=grass > absolutely not. Landuse is for general planning/zoning classification, > such as residential, industrial, mixed etc. > > The feature that has a grass surface will be something else, something > more specific like a park, a residential garden, a meadow, a field > (landuse=agriculture), or maybe the grass is just there because > *something* has to be (e.g. the centre of a roundabout). You're using a > tag originally intended for a sociopolitical construct (land use and > zoning) to show a physical characteristic of the land (what it's covered > with). The two are only loosely connected at best, and a surface covered > with grass can be put to many different and mutually exclusive *uses*. > > J. > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-GB mailing list > Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb >
_______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
