A user is deleting seamark:small_craft_facility:category=* and seamark:typesmall_craft_facility from showers and toilets at harbours worldwide in small changesets and adding a previously unused operator:type=marina.
Examples:
According to Wiki, the tagging was correct before. I have reverted three changesets in my vicinity where I have added the tag “operator:type=marina” to the showers and toilets.
According to the wiki, the previous tagging was correct. I have reverted three changesets in my area where I know from my own experience that the facilities are used by boat owners.
How do we proceed with the rest?
I’m not generally a fan of the wiki tendency to deprecate things, but should we perhaps look at deprecating the seamark: schema? It’s not at all OSM-ish, and very confusing for the non-initiate. The notion that showers which are, really, just like any other showers need to be tagged with seamark:small_craft_facility:category=showers, simply by virtue of their location vaguely near a coast, makes no objective sense.
My initial motivation was not to discuss the pros and cons of the current tagging scheme, but rather whether it is correct to remove it.
(If there is consensus within the community that it is deprecated, then I would assume so, but then it would have to be changed in the wiki).
It is one user who is changing and removing tagging in the map data and at the Wiki.
The changes are well-intentioned, as far as I can see.
But I don’t know about the history and reasons that led to the seamark tagging scheme. If it’s up-to-date and good to preserve, could be debatable. I question the seamark tagging for the toilet facilities on land here. But I am critical of the unilateral deletion of data and changes to the Wiki
We don’t have equivalent tagging for most of the seamark objects/attributes, so essentially this would be killing off maritime use of OSM (it isn’t as if I think the tagging scheme was designed particularly well, as you say it is very non-OSMish if there is such a thing).
In the cases at hand we don’t know if it was a mistaken double tagging or if the original mapper wanted to express that these are facilities that are available to users of the nearby maritime facility.
And again yes, there should have been a simpler way of expressing the above instead of introducing a complete new parallel tagging scheme, but it is what it is.
OpenSeaMap and the seamark: tagging scheme are weird. It all seems to stem from a bit of a (very long-standing) misunderstanding that OpenStreetMap is a place to host a largely separate schema for a separate mapping project, rather than a single unified database where renderers etc. effectively take their own db views. It’s as if OpenCycleMap had decreed that pubs along cycle routes should be tagged with cycle:refreshment:category=pub.
For my particular interest (inland boating) the outcome is inordinately messy, which I think is a contributor to the fact that no one has yet done anything compelling with OSM data for inland waterways. The showers at our marina, 45 miles inland, are not tagged with seamark:small_craft_facility:category=showers because why would they be. But if we cruise those 45 miles down to the estuary, the showers there will have seamark tags. Inland waterway signs are occasionally tagged with seamark:notice:function, mostly not. (Why would you tag this with a weird bunch of colon-infested tags when you could just use access tags for the correct arch? I honestly don’t get it.)
Obviously there are navigation-specific things that need detailed tagging. It’s good that this lighthouse and this beacon have detailed tagging explaining exactly how they function! And if that kind of tagging sits within its own namespace, well, it’s not OSM-ish but it’s not the end of the world. But the default should be to tag stuff in the manner everything else is tagged, and that means restricting seamark tagging to, well, sea marks.
(With apologies to @mcliquid for diverting his original thread about three changesets!)
(Here’s a quick Overpass map of seamark:notice:function=prohibition showing how unevenly it’s applied on inland waterways. Notice for example that, on the entirety of the River Thames, it’s found once in the estuary and then randomly a few times in Oxford.)
The issue with suggesting a revamp is that there, as far as at least I can determine, is no current generation of people involved enough in OpenSeaMap and Freie Tonne that would support redoing all their tooling/documentation/etc to support something saner (and iirc inland boating was already a contentious issue back then).
“Many of these categories relate to facilities that have public access. In such cases, the normal OSM tags should be used. Only those facilities whose access is restricted to small craft crews should carry the following tags.”
Does that makes the difference? Therefore a public accessible shower is tagged as an amenity, if not it is a seamark (only: no double tagging).
The seamarks tagging, while bonkers, does reflect a mature chart classification for many categories of things that are met with general apathy from the broader OSM community.
What does it mean when something is tagged tidal=yes? Any number of things according to the normal tagging, but with the seamark:*:water_level tagging there are nine different categories with concise descriptions. I think it would be a useful tag to re-use without all the prefixes but it only comes up once in a blue moon so who’s going to run the gauntlet of a tag proposal for something like that?
That’s the point. We definitely would want to continue to tag objects for which there is conventional OSM tagging with OSM tagging even if they are just accessible for maritime use.
adding seamark:small_craft_facility:category=toilets to amenity=toilets is pointless and absurd
if anyone wants to show public toilets then they should show amenity=toilets
if they wish to filter it to show/store only ones close to marinas or ports or coastline, they may process data
adding seamark:small_craft_facility:category=toilets to amenity=toilets makes as much sense as adding cycling:small_craft_facility:category=toilets to amenity=toilets just because it happens to be near cycling route.
Or motorist:small_craft_facility:category=toilets added to amenity=toilets just because it is on a fuel station.
Entire seamark: tagging scheme is badly thought-out but especially inventing own tag for public toilets is extremely silly.
(if I would have no more important things to do I would try to eliminate seamark:small_craft_facility:category=toilets duplicating amenity=toilets)
yes, as toilets parts is just extremely silly and insulting and treating OSM as free map data hosting service as far as it is added to public toilets
Though maybe part of these actually fulfill claimed wiki definition and are not in fact public toilets?
the toilets/showers are inside the fenced off grounds of the camping grounds and obviously not public. There is pedestrian access from the marina/slip to the camping grounds, and at least technically a way to access the toilets/showers.
What we don’t know is if the original mapper wanted to express that the facilities can be used by users of the boating facilities (by way of special arrangement with the operators of the camping grounds or whatever), or if it is double tagging. There is currently no other way to map the former, so removing the tagging would be a clear loss of information.
public toilets: a place where toilets are available for public use.
There is nothing about specific access, particular locations, or anything else different from amenity=shower/toilets. Therefore, nothing additional can be inferred from it.
If anything, the seamark tagging would imply that the toilets are access=yes.
The only loss of information would be “needs resurveying”, as you accurately describe that we don’t know what the mapper intended. That would at least rule out a mechanical edit, making the whole situation a lot more difficult to resolve.
From the wiki (in reference to seamark:small_craft_facility:category): Only those facilities whose access is restricted to small craft crews should carry the following tags.
