Talk:Land use and areas of natural land

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Struggling

I've been struggling with this natural/landuse tagging, I've been using a mixture of tagging. - sometimes landuse=grass and landuse=farm for individual fields. See here [[1]] Hawkeyes

Landuses should be in a separate database

I've done a plenty of patchwork mapping — here, for example, — and now my opinion is that landuses should be mapped separately from other features. This solves a multitude of problems, including Corine imports (check how they affect local communities). Also, it is logical, since landuse/natural cover 100% of Earth surface and is independent from other features. Nowadays I map no more than natural=water and natural=wood. --Zverik 09:32, 10 June 2011 (BST)


Unsuccessful merge of Landuse, Landcover and Vegetation

The intended merge of the Landuse, Landcover and Vegetation into this page seems to have been unsuccessful - the vast majority of the information on the previous pages:

is now (two weeks after the merge) neither available on this page nor accessible from there through links to other pages. The Vegetation section is completely empty.

I therefore intend to restore the separate Landuse, Landcover and Vegetation pages - anyone who wants to create a synthesis of these pages is welcome to do so but removal and redirection of the individual pages is only appropriate when their contents are properly represented on on the new page and the community had the chance to verify this.

--Imagico (talk) 16:19, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Hm, no? "neither available on this page nor accessible from there through links to other pages" try to click links instead of looking at them?
Environment#Vegetation leads to 12K long natural=* table
Environment#Landuse leads to (4!) pages: Key:landuse, Key:leisure, Key:man_made, Key:craft
Environment#Landcover leads to 14K big Key:surface and 6K big Proposed features/landcover.
There also recent feature page Forest
Any change that will lead to content duplication again should reverted and rethinked: Wiki_guidelines#Duplication. Xxzme (talk) 16:37, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
The original pages i linked to above represent distinct views on the representation of geographical features. These views are not available in the tag documentation but are important to give people from outside OSM the opportunity to get to know and understand the way things are mapped in OSM. Merging them into a common text that puts these views in relation and connects them to the way things are tagged in OSM would be a great contribution but this is a lot of work. If you want to do this you are welcome but in the past two weeks there have not been any efforts in that direction.
And i don't see any significant duplication on these pages - none of the tables there for example has an equivalent in form of either tables or lists or plain text on any of the other pages or any of those you linked to.
--Imagico (talk) 17:39, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
There no distinct views how to tag things in OSM. If there any differences they are represented at Key: and Tag: page. Differences in tagging represented in Category:Tagging guidelines and Category:Projects
natural=tree will mean single tree regardless of your views.
Previous pages were highly confusing, especially for beginners: Talk:Landuse#Landuse_vs_Vegetation_vs_Landcover_cleanup_.28Category:Features.29. I cannot see how your reverts will reduce inconsistency. Xxzme (talk) 17:52, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
I am talking about distinct views on the representation of geographical features in general, not just within OSM. These pages are primarily for people from outside OSM to introduce them to the system of tags in OSM. This requires showing them how the tags of OSM fit into their views of representing things. Landuse, landcover and vegetation types are widespread concepts of representing area like features in geography and environmental sciences and it is important to show how these translate into the OSM tagging system even if, especially if these views are inconsistent with one another.--Imagico (talk) 18:51, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
Then it should be projects/portals, but not feature pages for mappers (Category:Features). Have you noticed category mentioned in title? Pages inside Category:Features represent tagging in OSM and not somebody else about our tags. I should be placed somewhere else and not visible for mappers. Same thing I said to Harry, not sure if he got my message correctly.
Once again: Landuse/Vegetation/Landcover is terrible for people inside OSM/newcomers. See also 7 sections in Key:amenity, 3 sections in Key:natural. Xxzme (talk) 19:04, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
I have no objection against re-evaluating the categories of those pages. As said these are important and helpful for people with a geography/environmental science background, probably of less interest for people without connection to those fields.--Imagico (talk) 19:21, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
Well I have to admit, than I confused "Restored" with "Reverted" in your first message. Then fine, feel free to create Introduction to OSM for GIS people and if it will be good enough we can place it in Category:Portals or Category:Projects. Xxzme (talk) 19:27, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
Please don't use previous names Vegetation Landuse Landcover since they are used in documentation for mappers. Xxzme (talk) 19:29, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
As said i will restore the previous pages for the reasons mentioned unless there are convincing reasons not to - and so far you have not brought up any. You have replaced them with redirects with the stated intent to merge them but no substantial merging has taken place so far.--Imagico (talk) 19:37, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
Since you ignore what I said, I will revert duplicate info and misleading definitions and content duplication. Page provides sufficient references to study landcover, natural and landuse [2].
I pointed to your false statements but you decided to ignore them. Xxzme (talk) 19:42, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
No, i listened very carefully and addressed all of the points related to the matter at hand you brought up. It is you who ignored my arguments and who makes false statements, you claimed the removal of information from those pages was justified because it was duplicate, yet you were not able to show where else the content of these pages exists in duplication. I specifically mentioned that what is conveyed by the tables in those three pages is not represented elsewhere indicating that you removed substantial information that is not duplicate and you ignored that.
As i said initially - you would be more than welcome to actually truly merge the three pages mentioned into a single representation relating the three concepts to one another and to the OSM tagging scheme. This would be a really commendable contribution. If i see you start working in that direction i will refrain from restoring the pages and give you time to complete this even though the current situation with the missing pages is very unfavorable.--Imagico (talk) 20:32, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
Again, I cannot see how Introduction to OSM for GIS experts will help somebody. natural=tree in OSM means "single tree". It doesn't matter what you think about that tag is "natural" or "vegetation" or "green object". If you refer to natural=tree as "many trees", then it shouldn't placed in mappers documentation or wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/.
Merge was incredibly good for OSM mappers and beginners. You ignored fact that landuse=meadow was referenced 3 times and each time with different definition/context: [3], [4] [5]. Xxzme (talk) 08:23, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the effort, simply concatenating the three pages is not what i meant though and not what is expected if you announce you want to merge those three pages as you did. As said this will require to put the three concepts into relation to each other. This is a lot of work, several hours at least - if it was easy it would have happened a long time ago. Also the title is very misleading, the former title of this page would be an option (Land use and areas of natural land) or simply Landcover, Land use and Vegetation types. But you can start with the concatenation you have now, change the title and work on the text explaining the relations between the three concepts and this might work out to something more useful than the individual pages so they can be redirected to the merger.
And i am well aware that landuse=meadow is referenced in all three pages since this tag represents a landuse, a landcover and a vegetation type. This is not an error or an unnecessary duplication. Explaining this is part of what is required of a merger of the three pages.--Imagico (talk) 09:25, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
I have no idea what "Landcover, Land use and Vegetation types" should look like or target audience/purpose of this page. Your statements too vague. Personally I don't see how this page could be usefull for OSM beginners or target audience of this page. Xxzme (talk) 16:46, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
The target audience are those who are familiar with the concepts of landcover, land use and vegetation types and who are interested in learning how these concepts translate into the tagging scheme used in OSM. But i don't want to pressure you into working on this subject if you don't feel inclined to. We can consider the merge plans canceled then and i would restore the individual pages as initially suggested. --Imagico (talk) 17:25, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
No. Again, these pages were in Category:Features are not about abstract concepts "landcover" or "vegetation" or "landuse" - they describe tags in OSM. if they are placed in Category:Features, they shouldn't duplicated definitions from Key/tag pages.
There no abstract concepts in Buildings or Addresses or Natural or Geological or Boundaries. Xxzme (talk) 17:31, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
This is not about categories, this is about the removal of these three pages as part of the plan to merge these into one page - which did not happen, hence they are going to be restored since deletion was never discussed or even suggested. As said i am fine with the idea of re-evaluating the categories of those pages.
And by the way geology, addresses and boundaries are at least as abstract concepts as vegetation, don't you think? --Imagico (talk) 18:04, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
Pages weren't removed. You can observe/improve page at Landcover, Land use and Vegetation types.
They are not abstract. We start with addr:housenumber=* tag, addr:street and then we create "Addresses" to cover them all at single page to provide cross-links.
We don't start from "Addresses" concept and place tags we like too see with that name (exactly this was done in "Landcover, Land use and Vegetation types"). It is okay, if it is not visible for mappers/beginners.
If you inspect history of Category:Features pages, most of them were created by PeterIto based on existing tags in OSM and not abstract terms from GIS/wikipedia. We should follow this pattern since it is very practical within OSM (mappers/beginners). Xxzme (talk) 18:14, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
No, you removed the three mentioned pages with the claimed intent to merge them and replaced them with redirects to a page that has nothing to do with the initial content and purpose of these pages. Now after i pointed out that this is not what you announced and and put up for discussion: Talk:Landuse#Landuse_vs_Vegetation_vs_Landcover_cleanup_.28Category:Features.29 - which by the way was already pointed out by others there - you created a new page concatenating the three pages in lieu or a merge but kept the redirects to the unrelated Environment page. All of this is completely against the established procedures here.
You would be well advised to accept you handled this inappropriately and restore the previous state yourself. You should also take note that the idea of purposely hiding information ('it is okay, if it is not visible for mappers/beginners') generally does not go well with the OSM community. --Imagico (talk) 18:55, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
Environment is main page in Category:Environment and it describes existing tags in OSM and not how tags in OSM can be grouped by vague terms 3 or 10 times. Previous texts does not belong in Category:Features or its articles. Xxzme (talk) 19:09, 9 May 2015 (UTC)