I would like to criticise the tag “museum=apis_mellifera” and put it up for discussion.
A museum on this topic is essentially about beekeeping, not about the honeybee species alone. That’s why a tag like “beekeeping” or “apiculture” would be more appropriate.
I see no need to introduce a special value for beekeeping in museum=*:
Rural and commercial beekeeping, with the purpose of ensuring pollination and obtaining bee products, should be seen as part of agriculture. Then a beekeeping museum can be counted as museum=agriculture.
Alternatively, the bee and its ecology can be placed at the centre of attention. Then museum=nature should be the correct categorisation.
I consider it inconsistent to use the value “apis_mellifera” on the same level as “art”, “nature” or “history”.
My suggestion is to delete the entry museum=apis_mellifera without replacement.
To tag the type or subject of a museum more precisely, there are options using subject=* or museum:type=*, as described in the wiki.
I could see point of tagging like museum=agriculture agriculture=beekeeping (not convinced that it is actually better) but removal without replacement is causing data loss.
It was my suggestion to discuss this in the international part of the forum as it is of general interest, so the outcome of a German discussion would likely be contested as not sufficient
I’m neither using nor mapping museum data at this level of detail. But intuitively, I would agree that apis_mellifera is not at the same level of abstraction as the other values documented for the museum key and that it might therefore make more sense to use a more general category, possibly paired with some other tag for this specific subject.
I’d normally suggest getting users of this data involved in such a discussion so that we have more than just data modelling intuition to ground this discussion on, but there don’t appear to be any. The Taginfo projects page for museum only lists editors, but no data consumers.
I would actually only use the tag for species=apis_mellifera (and strictly speaking one should use apis_mellifera_mellifera for the European dark honeybee). Because there are other species that are used for beekeeping worldwide.
Here in Germany, only Apis mellifera carnica and a cross between many subspecies of the western honey bee, called Buckfast Bee, are of major economic importance. Apis mellifera ligustica is common in Italy, Apis dorsata in southern India, Apis laboriosa in the Himalayas, etc.
The northern European species of honey bee apis_mellifera cannot be used to describe global biodiversity. This species only became a synonym for honey bee for historical reasons, because Carl von Linné described it with his nomenclature and knew nothing of the other species at the time.
Ausgeführte Argumente:
Ich würde den tag eigentlich nur für species=apis_mellifera nutzen (und ganz streng genommen müsste man apis_mellifera_mellifera für die europäische dunkle Honigbiene verwenden). Denn es gibt noch ganz andere Arten mit denen weltweit geimkert wird.
Hier in D hat eine größere wirtschafliche Bedeutung eigentlich nur Apis mellifera carnica und eine Kreuzung aus vielen Unterarten der westlichen Honigbiene, die Buckfast Bee heißt. In Italien ist Apis mellifera ligustica verbreitet, im südlichen Indien gibt es Apis dorsata, im Himalaya Apis laboriosa usw.
Mit der nordeuropäische Art der Honigbiene apis_mellifera kann die weltweite biologischen Vielfalt nicht übergreifend benannt werden. Zum Synonym für Honigbiene wurde diese Art nur aus historischen Gründen, weil Carl von Linné sie mit seiner Nomenklatur beschrieben hat und damals von den anderen Arten nichts wusste.
Is it possible to leave the tag in the wiki and add a reference to this critical discussion?
Then the mappers can form their own opinion.
Deleting it without replacement would be appropriate from my point of view, but I understand that this can lead to a loss of information.
Ist es möglich im wiki den Tag zu belassen und einen Hinweis auf diese kritische Diskussion zu setzen?
Dann können sich die mapper selbst jeweils eine Meinung bilden.
Die ersatzlose Streichung wäre aus meiner Sicht zwar angemessen, aber ich verstehe, dass das zu Informationsverlust führen kann.
Deleting it without replacement would be appropriate from my point of view, but I understand that this can lead to a loss of information.
loss of information is not in the interest of OpenStreetMap (IMHO), rather the information could be restructured to better fit into the system, without loosing information
I would add this line in the wiki
museum=apis_mellifera (bees)
like this:
museum=apis_mellifera (is criticised as a value for beekeeping, see discussion)
This way I don’t change any information and at the same time question the current practice.
Is this compatible?
Ich würde diese Zeile im wiki
museum=apis_mellifera (bees)
so ergänzen:
museum=apis_mellifera (is criticised as a value for beekeeping, see discussion)
So verändere ich keine Informationen und stelle gleichzeitig die derzeitige Praxis in Frage.
Ist das anschlussfähig?
For a tag that has only been used 40 times, and most of the time (29 times) by a single user, I would just send that user a message and ask them nicely if they would be happy with me changing the tag.
I’ve done that a few times - mostly when I thought they had accidentally used a different tag from the one they meant - and most times the response I got was along the lines of ‘yes, sure, it’s a Wiki’.
Thanks for your assessment. It’s the first time I’ve suggested such a change and I thought it should be as transparent as possible for everyone to understand, so I looked for the discussion in the forum. I’ll take your advice on board and write to the user myself.
Thanks for the link to your query - I can’t do that myself yet. With this information, the problem really does appear in a different light.