not sure how popular it is but I commonly edit by editing raw tag list and presence of gnis: tags there is exactly what triggered this proposal.
I am team if these are useless, let’s remove them in a big edit and be done with it. Is there a compelling technical reason why some number of objects (700,000 in this case) shouldn’t be touched? My impression is that this amount of fiddling is completely reasonable traffic in the db.
1 Like
It makes it a little more difficult to tell what hasn’t gotten edited since the import. But it wouldn’t be nearly the first time GNIS features have gotten touched en masse anyways. A thorough query would have to look at history to be sure.
“traffic in the db” is not a problem at all
Reasonable objections that I am aware of include:
- resets “last edit time”
- messes up history (though removal as discardable tag in unrelated edit does not seem to be better)
anything else?
Bumping this old thread with a summary after skimming it again. Feel free to let me know if I’ve misinterpreted something.
It appears that there are no strong objectors to removal of this tag. There are a decent number of folks that are strong supporters of the proposal to remove all gnis:+ tags that are not gnis:feature_id.
Currently no one is signed up to do this work but if someone wished to proceed that would be okay. (feel free to vote 
in the reacts to this last sentence to get a rough consensus)
7 Likes
Strictly speaking I planned to do this, but would not be sad if edit itself would be run by someone else (I am definitely not in danger of running out of things to improve in OSM)
2 Likes
Did someone say “mass edit”? 
3 Likes
It looks like a couple of people implemented some sort of mass edit, although the changesets are so large it’s hard to analyze them. See for example Changeset: 147973766 | OpenStreetMap and Changeset: 147953938 | OpenStreetMap. For posterity’s sake, can those users (I see @ablevi202 and @Friendly_Ghost at least) document here or somewhere else exactly which tags they removed in these edits?
1 Like
I removed all gnis: tags except gnis:feature_id, gnis:edited, and gnis:reviewed.
Therefore, this is the whole list of tags that were remvoed: gnis:fcode gnis:ftype gnis:created gnis:county_id gnis:state_id gnis:county_name gnis:feature_type gnis:import_uuid gnis:County gnis:ST_num gnis County_num gnis:ST_alpha gnis:Class gnis:name gnis:Cell gnis:ST_alph gnis:ufi gnis:uni gnis:state gnis:county
4 Likes
Writing things down is fun and good. Thanks to everyone who writes things down.
1 Like
Same.
1 Like
Thanks for cleaning this stuff up! I saw the changesets roll through my area, and I was very happy thinking about all those tags going away.
2 Likes
gnis:edited is similar to gnis:created: it says when the record was last modified in GNIS prior to the import into OSM. The only potential use of this tag would be to compare it to edited dates in the current GNIS database to see which ones need to be updated in OSM. But as with tiger:reviewed, someone could’ve already updated the feature in OSM without touching that tag. Any “three-way merge” of a given feature could instead compare version 1’s tags and coordinates with the current version and current GNIS. I think that would be more reliable than merely comparing timestamps anyways.
1 Like
@Kai_Johnson is working on various tooling to try and sort out “this got updated in GNIS but not yet on OSM” for various classes of things.
Note that this proposal remains active - not all such tags were removed. See for example Node: Grace United Methodist Church (357813137) | OpenStreetMap and gnis:created | Keys | OpenStreetMap Taginfo
1 Like
Anyone finding this thread later, you can know if it’s completed by looking at the counts of various tags here: Search results | OpenStreetMap Taginfo
Maybe we will succeed this time. Maybe we will just dent it some more. Either way, it is appreciated.
I created Key:gnis:County - OpenStreetMap Wiki and plan to create similar for other keys.
Even after they will be gone such documentation (rather than redirect to very large article) may be useful to people looking at history of objects. And to people who will notice bot edit removing this tags.
2 Likes
Is anyone interested in list of suspicious combinations like gnis:feature_type = Mine on power=tower ?
See
- gnis:feature_type = Mine
- landuse = quarry
- material = wood
- name = Rattlesnake Park Mine
- power = tower
on Node: Rattlesnake Park Mine (2308446206) | OpenStreetMap
Or should gnis:feature_type be mass removed from all objects, not only where it clearly duplicates existing main keys?
1 Like
Also: is it welcome to remove gnis:name where it matches already present name or official_name tag values?
Should we mass remove also gnis:reviewed - see gnis:reviewed | Keys | OpenStreetMap Taginfo
I expect that gnis:edited should be removed.
NHD:GNIS_Name probably should be handled with other NHD:* tags.
(this above is based on writing draft code of cleanup bot and test dry run)
I generally think that with these import tags, it’s usually just the unique IDs that we care about, which might allow us to link back to original data sets. So I’m all for purging things that add no value.
2 Likes