Talk:Tag:landcover=grass

Still proposal

Hi the key for the feature is still in proposal ,How can this page be here even before the key is approved.--Muzirian (talk) 10:19, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

The wiki documents a the common understanding by mappers how to use a particular tag. This tag is used about 7000 times, so it needs documentation. Significant use by many mappers is one way to establish a tag; a proposal/voting process is another. --Polarbear w (talk) 23:16, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

The sense of this tag

"(describing the human use..." So this is about the usage. Right? But this tags says nothing about the usage! In this way it has the same meaning like natural=grass.

If it's about the usage of an area there should be a usage tag, isn't it? Some ideas...

usage=

• street_side_green
• public (in a park)
• garden_design (as a piece of a designt garden)

Used in this way I don't understand the sense of this tag. --EinKonstanzer (talk) 10:35, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Sorry you misread the description. Landuse is about the use, natural is about unused natural geographical features. Landcover is about the presence of grass, independent if it is used or not, and independent of what the landuse of the area is, e.g. a patch of grass on a landuse=retail. Have a look at the proposal page which explains that in more detail. I'll also clarify the description. --Polarbear w (talk) 10:52, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Documentation improvement

Since Warin61 insists on hiding the existence of the established tags for grass mapping with 2m+ uses from the readers of this page here for future reference the description i drafted that might actually be helpful to mappers instead of the current unhelpful living in the bubble of key semantics religion text:

Other primary tags used to describe areas with grass growing on them with partly more specific meaning are natural=grassland, landuse=meadow and landuse=grass.

As an add-on (subsidiary property) tag for other features e.g. a road indicating a grass surface you can use surface=grass.

Somewhat similar but different types of vegetation are described with natural=heath and natural=scrub.

--Imagico (talk) 00:54, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

The tag landuse=grass is a poor choice for any grassed area and its use should not be encouraged. Exactly what is the land USED for? Grass is not a land USE, but it is a land COVER. Thus the landcover=grass should not suggest the use of a tag that does confuse people and is misinterpreted. Warin61 (talk) 01:06, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Warin61's intentions, and I agree with Imagico that documentation needs improvement. My idea is to draw examples, where in the first case there is e.g. landuse=residential, which is "covered" with some building=house and some landcover=grass. The counterexample is the landuse=meadow which is covered with cows grazing, and maybe still landuse=grass, where having a large lawn is the prime purpose and use. --Polarbear w (talk) 13:44, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Land is never 'used' by grass. The grass in the centre of the road is there to provide road safety, the same as if it were covered by concrete, so the land use here is highway even if vehicle are not meant to drive on it. A building does not get landuse=building, it gets things like landuse=residential, commercial etc. Grass should get the same treatment, if it is on the premises of a home then it is landuse=residential. Land use grass is a major error in concepts. What next? landuse=purple? Warin61 (talk) 22:00, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Artificial grass

Warin61 has changed this -> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Tag:landcover%3Dgrass&diff=next&oldid=1884914 , so, why not make it simple , and also add (artificial) grass(artificial turf) on landcover=grass , and then add ; artificial=yes , because on an aerial photo, one can not always see if it is 'plants' or 'synthetic fibers' --Henke54 (talk) 14:09, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Ground survey comes into the game here. From aerial imagery you cannot even distinguish if it is grass, plastic grass, or green painted concrete. --Polarbear w (talk) 15:42, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Even with ground survey (from a certain distance), one cannot distinguish a 'hybrid'or 'reinforced natural grass' area from a 'natural' grass area . --Henke54 (talk) 18:17, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

The use follows that of the surface tag that has existed for longer than this tag. If you want to change it here then it may mean changing the use of the surface tag to match. Such discussion could take place on the tagging list. Use of artificial turf is costly so it only take place where those cost are justified and usually over small areas, large areas are usually real grass. Here https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit#map=18/-33.74265/151.07999 is a cricket pitch on the left with real grass and a soccer pith on the right with artificial turf, I think here there is a satellite difference. Warin61 (talk) 23:26, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

The surface tag may exist for longer time, but (in my opinion) should be 'deprecated', because the landcover tag is ALL ENCOMPASSING -> Land cover is the physical material at the surface of the earth. Land covers include grass, asphalt, trees, bare ground, water, etc. --Henke54 (talk) 11:30, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

The idea of deprecating the 'surface' tag seems awkward to me, it is used a lot on highways, 26 Mill times in total. To describe the surface of a highway with 'landcover' is counterintuitive. --Polarbear w (talk) 12:38, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

The surface tag is a property tag of some other major tag. The landcover tag is a major tag, and is independent of other tags. the two are not able to be used in place of one another . there values should be compatible.

Alternative tags vs See Also

Warin, The alternatives tags section has been in the page for at least several years. I just added the "see also" section at the bottom for completeness today. I don't think you should remove the alternatives section because it's different. "See also" is interpreted by users such as the wikibase data items as "tags that are different than this tag", while really landuse=grass is a nearly identical synonym. And natural=grassland and even landuse=meadow have also been used in a synonymous way by many mappers. It's also clearer that the utility of this tag is disputed by including the section closer to the top. This tag was never approved and is much less common than landuse=grass and the other alternatives. While I support documenting tags that are in use even if they have problems, I don't think it's helpful to fragment tagging usage by implying that this tag is established, when there are well-established alternatives. --Jeisenbe (talk) 07:01, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

"See also" is interpreted by users such as the wikibase data items as "tags that are different than this tag", while really landuse=grass is a nearly identical synonym. - No, I interpret the "see also" as "have a look at those pages as well to make up your mind". Landcover is not a synonym of corresponding landuse tags, it is meant to be used orthogonally. Landcover=grass can therefore appear on a variety of landuses. --Polarbear w (talk) 17:22, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

We need to talk to Yuri about how the data items interpret these tags, then.

Re: synonymes, while landuse=meadow and natural=grassland are more specific features, most uses of landuse=grass are exactly the same as the proposal landcover=grass "any area of grass": though some mappers reserve this tag for grass that doesn't qualify for =meadow or =grassland, overall it just means "grass". Hence, landcover=grass is a synonym for the 100 time more common tag landuse=grass. --Jeisenbe (talk) 08:07, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Redirect to landuse=grass or grass, add as synonym for landuse=grass

I've previously tried to make wiki pages for tags that were used more frequently than this one, but were less popular than another in use tag, and been told that this was not appropriate, since the other tag was clearly more common and established: eg., building:cladding=* vs building:material=*: see Talk:Key:building:cladding. Part of the role of the wiki is to reduce tagging fragmentation, by redirecting users to frequently used tags, rather than documenting everything that has some use as a synonym for another tag. Therefore, I propose redirecting this page to landuse=grass, the 100 times more common tag for general grass landcover, and adding landcover=grass as a possible synonym for landuse=grass. Alternately, we could create a more descriptive page at grass to describe the different ways that grass areas are mapped in more detail, and redirect this page there. --Jeisenbe (talk) 09:01, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

As I understand it, landcover=grass is not meant to be equivalent to landuse=grass. As is the case for other landcover=* tags, landcover=grass allows clear distinction to be made between landcover and landuse where otherwise multiple landuses would confusingly overlap. Common example where landcover=grass is useful would be grass landcover within park or within cemetery. This page is currently sort of deceiving as it has been rewritten to mainly contrast tag usage counts, while landcover and landuse distinction is for some reason overlooked. Pikse 11:36, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

According to https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/landcover it is equivalent to landuse=grass and "clear distinction to be made between landcover and landuse" was not intended - it was supposed to replace landuse=grass Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 12:41, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Not sure where you found the word "equivalent". The proposal page emphasizes that, for landuse vs landcover, "These concepts are orthogonal". That orthogonality was for some time in the feature pages as well until somebody removed it. --Polarbear w (talk) 22:18, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

"The 'landuse=grass' tag could be deprecated with landcover=grass taking its place." "landuse=grass (while originally defined for grass areas part of a highway, it is now often used as a generic grass area: landcover=grass)" Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 23:00, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

It may be so that landuse=grass can be replaced with landcover=grass but this does not mean that reversely any landcover=grass can be replaced with landuse=grass. If landuse=grass is used then, as pointed in your quote, it's unclear what grass as landuse really means, and generally it seems that truly just landcover is meant. Reversely, as already pointed out above, if we have landcover=grass within clearly distinct landuse such as park or cemetery then it'd be messy and ambiguous to turn this landcover into an overlapping landuse. So, as for the question of when or if landuse=grass should be used, it'd probably be better to discuss this separately. Pikse 11:58, 12 October 2022 (UTC)