How should new tags for technical railway information be designed?

General talk Tagging general discussion
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I would like to introduce more tags for railways that convey more technical information such as rail fastener system, railway sleeper types, et cetera.

I am inclined to just start using and making Wiki pages for tags such as railway:sleeper=wooden and railway:fastener=rail_spike or similar, but I think asking the community first is a good first move.

The railway:*=* tag format is pretty well used, it is used for tags describing basically all railway features, and part of me thinks it would be better if there is a “sub-tag” system to organise the tags better. For example, features regarding the sleepers would use the format railway:sleeper:*=*, for example railway:sleeper:type=wooden and railway:sleeper:fastener=rail_spike. This seems much more organised to me, but is not established with other tags.

(For example, tags regaring signalling systems don’t use tags like railway:signalling:etcs=yes, though in my opinion, that would be smart.)

How do you all think I should proceed?

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Fundamentally, the railway:*= prefix has already been disliked as meaingless and over-namespaced. It’s already on railway= features. Doesn’t add anything. They are kept for reasons. Overall, ORM users seemed to have invented many anew undiscussed.
*:type= is a meaingless suffix. railway:sleeper=wooden would simply be sleeper:material=wood in general OSM. sleeper= should be used for unique attributes, for the form. Railroad tie - Wikipedia

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Thank you!

I think distinguishing between sleeper=* and sleeper:material=* would be difficult as the attributes of the sleeper often comes with the material. If you have “regular” sleepers made of wood, sleeper:material=wood would work but what would sleeper= be?