The OSM wiki has a set of symbols that are used to distinguish whether a tag can be applied to nodes (), ways (), and relations () and also to indicate when a role is being discussed ().
I think it might sometimes be handy to have these icons (and their cancelled versions) available as emoji on this forum when discussing schemes for mapping various objects.
Discourse apparently has the ability to allow custom emoji to be defined for a forum.
Table of icons and potential shortcut
name
icon
:node:
:way:
:c-way: or :area:
:relation: or :rel:
:role:
:-node:
:-way:
:-c-way: or :-area:
:-relation: or :-rel:
Other candidates for inclusion could include the vote symbols and “k=” icons that are occasionally seen.
Does anyone else thing this would be useful or do we think these would just sit unused in a menu if they were added?
I think I have oversimplified a little by forgetting that there is a separate closed way icon . For some reason I didn’t think to just look at the category in the wiki.
Trying to enforce consistency on the wiki sounds like a Sisyphean task. Today I’m more curious if we think it would be useful to be able to say e.g. " if you have a hail_and_ride section of the route then you shouldn’t need to define separate stops" when discussing how to map things here.
It would be fun. Though I hope it wouldn’t add to the bewilderment of newcomers already having to figure out alphabet soup like OTG, CS, and ATYL for themselves.
They might be something you’d want to be a little sparing with for brand new users, but the existing emoji do show their “name” on mouseover so that would at least provide a term to look up in the wiki if the final choice of name isn’t too abbreviated.
I don’t know if any of the ways people regularly receive forum content do just show raw markdown, but if so then I think the example above would stay relatively readable:
if you have a :role:`hail_and_ride` section of the :rel:`route` then
you shouldn't need to define separate stops
If it’s relevant if it is one or the other (way, node, relation), this should be spelled out in text, not signalled in a hard to identify icon.
To merely illustrate ways, I don’t think it adds much. Worse, it makes the already slow loading forum even more bloated. Initiatives to remove slack from forum seem more worthwhile. Pages should be much easier to load.
To quote the one existing emoji currently in used in this thread Windows Narrator currently reads " " as “slight underscore smile image slight underscore smile image”. I don’t know why it says it twice (the Firefox accessibility inspector only says it once) but I gather the Windows built in reader isn’t actually that popular and maybe this is part of the reason for that.
As long as the names chosen are reasonable I don’t expect it’ll be any more broken than the rest of Discourse.
Searching for custom emojis on the Discourse meta seems to work ok, even without the “:”.
), ways (
), and relations (
) and also to indicate when a role is being discussed (
).
. For some reason I didn’t think to just look at the