WanTan
31
Imho using “name” and “name:en” will not do it, as long as there is no clear decision to use the “local language” in the name-tag. And if this decision would be done, there would still be the problem to decide what is this “local language” for some regions.
Imho there are three (or maybe more) alternatives for bilingual maps:
1.) Tagging different in different locations. E.g. not adding name:en in the region of the USA or in regions where there “is no need for biligual writing” (e.g. Germany). This will be difficult to do in a wiki-based community like OSM. And there is e.g. the problem that in English its called “Munich” not “München”. Making exceptions in cases like this seems not practicable.
2.) Using rendering rules to let the renderer decide what has to be written to the specific geografical point. Maybe the renderer could use “is_in”-tags for this or do some calculation. This would be very flexible and powerful. But there would be the same problem e.g. with cities like Munich.
3.) Add some new tags for this problem of creating a “default bilingual map”. Something like “name:default_world” and “name:default_local”. This seems to be the cleanest solution but also the solution with the biggest effort.
In Thailand we always add the same value for streets in “name” and “name:th”. Why should we forbit the same for UK, USA, Canada, Australia, …? This will simply not work imho.
And who wants to make the decision that “English is the language of the world”? Some people will say “No, its Esperanto” others will say “No, its Chinese”.
Doesn’t Google have something like a “community based map maker tool”? Maybe we should have a look at it how they handle this problem for their map.
I am not sure what you want to tell us. Is there a concrete problem with other users changing the name-tags of your edits?
I do not consider this thread as “closed” or “useless”. I am still thinking about the problem. But naming in general is a very big problem in OSM. The more i think about it, the bigger the problem gets 
