Landcover-Natural-Surface ... Confusing !

The Tag:natural=scrub is also ‘singular’ and still in use and approved for rendering. … Also, the word scrub is rather more used as a verb or slang language than shrub … so,… the Tag:natural=scrub should ‘actually’ better be ; Tag:natural=shrub(s):wink:

I’m not so concerned about the actual word that’s used. I’m more concerned about changing the meaning of the tag. natural=scrub says:

…so there’s no problem with using it to tag an area of bushes, even though the word used is singular.

On the other hand, natural=dune says:

In this case, recommending that it be used for tagging an area covered with dunes would be changing the meaning of the tag. Such a change should be discussed with a wider audience.

I agree with you about that, because sometimes those wiki’s are contradicting/confusing →

and →

a dune covered area is in my opinion not only sand, but sand and vegetation … mostly dunegrass and dune vegetation

I’m a native English speaker and I use scrub as a term for this all the time: it’s pretty much the state of art term used by professional ecologists in Britain. Scrub as a verb largely refers to cleaning things vigorously. Shrubs are types of plants (microphanerophytes) not a habitat type, see Shrubland on Wikipedia for this and other similar words.

Rather more importantly, natural=scrub has been used on OSM for nigh on 15 years and therefore has a well-established semantic of its own irrespective of its original relationship to the normal meaning in English.

I made another landcover=dunes and deleted my ‘contribution’ of natural=dune(s), because dunes can also be ‘man made’ , so the key:natural, which Jeisenbe is ‘forcing’ to keep → also here,…since when can 1 person decide if a tag is deprecated ??against all ‘logic’ , can actually be replaced by landcover=*

Land form not land cover.
Dunes are not land covers but land forms, like hills and valleys, they have a shape.

Natural not just ‘natural’ but also ‘unnatural’.
The key natural is, in OSM, used with both natural things and unnatural things. If, like me, you object to this misuse of the English language then dual tag. For things that are land covers use the key landcover for things that are landforms use the key landform. Unfortunately you may have to use the key natural for rendering.

Rendering
If something needs to be rendered now then select something that is already being rendered that it a fair fit. For ‘sand dunes’ I would use natural=sand (it is a landcover tag) but I would also tag it landform=dune for accuracy and probably landcover=sand for complete accuracy!

Up the rebels!:slight_smile:

so… better make also a key landform then ? :wink:
also, how to make from this a Tag:landform=dune(s) ? so i can delete my ‘contribution’

Edit : i made those, but (as usual) they labeled it for deletion, so my ‘contribution’ of Tag:landform=dune(s) shall probably also not be accepted … well … so long then with that ‘natural’, that actually NO natural is … and by the way ; i am curious about those ricefields-plateaus (which are a landform)from the picture beneath here, how to tag them ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landforms
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Landform_examples
https://www.holidayme.com/explore/10-ingenious-man-made-landforms-you-wont-believe-are-real/
https://www.architecturendesign.net/16-beautiful-manmade-landforms-you-have-to-visit-once-in-your-lifetime/

Of course not.
There is little use of the key landform. And it is not documented well. I’ll start a table to demonstrate OSM usage.
Suggest you help by adding to the table using values from taginfo.

Think I have now added a few of these tags to some of my local dunes, together with natural=dune. Note the tag landform=erg!

They are farm fields that produce rice … so tags to use?

landuse=farmland (renders)
produce=rice (no rendering)
crop=rice (no rendering) - I don’t like this tag … it is a sub set of the above produce tag, but has greater numbers in the data base, I prefer to use my brains that rely on frequency of use.

You can do each field individually so it looks good, or be lazy and just combine them into one large area - that doe get the rought message across.

What about those ? → https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Landform_examples … add them also on that table ?

I would suggest to add new tags in the proposal space of the wiki. This way you won’t have trouble with people deleting them. The key and tag definition pages are for established tags. If you’re unsure about the acceptance of tags and their definition, you could write here or on the tagging mailing list to gather comments and opinions, so you can decide whether it seems acceptable to set up a new page.

how to get this page as ‘proposed’ then ? Or is there another way to have that page NOT ‘deleted’ ?
edit; → thanks Dieterdreist

I am not familiar with mailinglists, and do not want that … also according Mateusz Konieczny, who ‘delete things willingly’ , is a ‘dictionary’ the same as a wikipedia-quote ? I thought that wikipedia and OSM rather would be ‘collaborating’ ?

so,… better delete my contribution of landcover=dune(s) and my other contribution of a landform related ‘contribution’ of dune(s) on the Key:natural ? … because Warin61 wrote ; →

If you want to persuade people to accept your point of view you have to engage with them and discuss things with them. If you’re not willing to do that, you shouldn’t be surprised when people don’t understand what you’re trying to do.

The point Mateusz was making was that the pages you created didn’t have any OSM-related content. There was no description of how the tag is used, what other related tags could be used, no Taginfo box showing the amount of usage, etc. You didn’t even have a link to the higher-level tag (e.g. tower:type). All you had was a dictionary definition, which doesn’t help anyone with mapping. We aren’t duplicating Wikipedia in this wiki; we’re documenting how tags are used in the OSM database.

OK, tnx for clearing that up :wink: … but it seems that some kind of Internal error(Fatal exception of type “Error” ) has happened in the links from above … and i am not involved in that … :expressionless:

yes, earlier today the wiki broke down, but it is back up now.

Someone said to me that there are no brackets allowed in tag-titles … so, is Tag:landform=dune(s) allowed or not ? … there is also a Tag:landform=dune which should actually plural … = Tag:landform=dunes (if brackets are not allowed)
Is it true that brackets are not allowed in tag-titles ?

it was a general error not specifically related to your page

thank you :wink: … also, i just want to know, if brackets are allowed in tag-titles or not, because i wanted to ‘make’ the Tag:landform=dune(s) (without brackets if it is not allowed) … because there are several ‘dune-areas’ in my country …coastal dunes, but also dunes inland →
https://www.ivn.nl/afdeling/groene-zoom/activiteiten/excursie-kriekelareduinen

I don’t understand why you want brackets in the tag. I can’t remember ever seeing a tag with brackets in it like that, and I expect many mappers would be confused about why the “(s)” is there. Is it because you want this tag to serve two purposes: both to tag a single dune and to tag an area of many dunes? Mixing definitions like that will make things tougher for data consumers, because it will be harder for them to tell which case has been mapped for a given object. There need to be separate tags for these two cases.

For single dunes, we already have the established tag natural=dune, so there isn’t a need for another one.

For an area of many dunes, I wouldn’t be opposed to landform=dunes. That being said, this tag hasn’t been used even once, so creating a page for it would be premature. You should start in the mailing lists to see if others agree and then start a proposal.

yes … and IF those round brackets(parentheses) are allowed, it could also be used on (for example) a Tag:landcover=tree(s), so that a ‘single tree’ or a ‘tree row’ also could be a ‘landcover’ …

a single dune-top(for example with a name) could be a single node … a ‘ridge’ of dunes could be ways … and multple dunes an area

as Warin61 also says ; →

I thought that Warin61 already started this in mailing list …