In other words, map something that doesn’t yet exist on the ground?
Maybe something changed overnight and now it’s OpenFantasyMap, but up to now the idea is to map what’s on the ground - today, not yesterday, and not some possible time in the future.
Lifecycle tags are well established at this point (if sometimes controversial), let’s not derail this thread by re-hashing that argument here.
Lifecycle tags like construction:* are very well-established and I use that one all the time, but using proposed:* for things not on the ground is not.
The wiki says:
proposed:*=*
usage: over 210,000 elements (nodes, ways and relations) include the prefix (as of 2026).
Again though, I don’t want to get into an argument about this here. That’s not what this topic is about. I just wanted to inform others of another common way to do what @gendy54 was describing.
@maptheworld2050 As the wiki at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:proposed: says:
Note that generally, OpenStreetMap encourages information to be verifiable on the ground. Proposed features that are not visible on the ground should therefore only be mapped in exceptional cases and after a discussion with the relevant OSM community, lest they might be deleted for lack of verifiability.*
You’re conflating tagging something that exists on the ground with proposed:* with making a new object that doesn’t yet exist and tagging it with proposed:*. You can tag existing objects all day long, but my point is simply that you should not create an object on OSM that doesn’t exist on the ground. If you do, it can be - and should be - deleted until construction exists.
I’ve already acknowledged it’s controversial. If you want to propose deleting all 210,000 existing elements with the proposed tag prefix (which is explicitly for features not yet visible on the ground) I think you should do that in a separate thread. (I’m going to stop engaging on this subject in this thread because I think it’s already created way too much noise. Let’s keep this discussion focused on improvements to the notes system, please.)
Again you’re missing the point, so let me try to make it in a different way. If all those existing elements with the proposed tag are on elements that already exist on the ground, then it’s fine. If they’re on elements that don’t yet exist on the ground, then it’s a verifiability issue.
So, for example, you could have an existing road that is proposed to be widened or extended. The proposed tag could be used on that existing road.
This is a fundamental issue for OSM. Is the map showing what’s on the ground now - or not?
A large proportion of those 210k tags seem to be on power infrastructure. It’s not really common for things like buildings and amenities (about 10k uses between those categories).
Edit: I now think this is mostly railway infrastructure, see my later post.
Also next_check_date appears to have only 29 uses.
Are they proposals for increased voltage or power level?
I just did an overpass-turbo search and found a bunch of roads that might not yet exist:
[out:json];
{{geocodeArea:New Mexico}}->.searchArea;
nwr[proposed];
out geom;
And so far I’m not seeing any notes for those. This is a problem. Apparently some people think it’s fine to map stuff that doesn’t yet exist on the ground. Obviously I’m not one of those people. That’s why we have notes.
Actually I may have misinterpreted that. It looks like tags such as proposed:voltage are mainly on proposed railways, not power networks.
Thst also implies there are far fewer than 210k objects. I think what we are seeing is roughly 38k railway objects typically with 4 proposed:tags.
Do you mean there are only 4 proposed tags in total, across all 38k railway objects, or each of the 38k railway objects has 4 proposed tags per object? 
The latter, if I’m interpreting taginfo correctly (and it’s certainly possible that I am not).
It looks like proposed:electrified, proposed:frequency, and proposed:voltage almost always coincide with each other and with a railway tag. So somewhere between 3 and 4 proposed tags per object depending on whether the railway itself is proposed. I guess many may be existing non electrified railways where electrification is planned.
I’m not sure now if the wiki reference to 210k elements is correct or if it is actually a count of tags that double counts elements - anyone who is really interested should probably write a proper query and not rely on my attempt to interpret taginfo on a mobile phone screen!
