“historic=tower_house” together with “tower_house:type=kula” also seems like a good way to tag fortified buildings in the Balkans.
This tagging is more specific than a simple “historic=castle” with “castle_type=tower_house”.
Using “tower_house:type”, we can map different types of tower houses built around the globe:
My question for this thread is, because this seems to be the most agreed on option, does the community think it would warrant opening a new tag proposal?
I personally wouldn’t bother with a new proposal - you’ll just get lots of people who have no idea what a tower house is arguing over the semantics. Instead I’d pick some schema among the people in this thread who have expressed an interest and go with that. It doesn’t really matter what tag is used as long as that tag isn’t used for a different concept in OSM already.
I’m sure that the general purpose map renderers won’t show them differently to other historic things, but specific historic renderers might. If you look in taginfo at the projects that say they do something with historic values that will give you an idea who to lobby to get these things showing e.g. with a unique icon.
Oh, ok. I was thinking that maybe a proposal would lead to a wiki article, but the way you described it really makes it seem like a complicated process:))
You can always create a wiki page. Verge is an example of a wiki page that was “just created” and never voted on.
Something like “how should we tag Balkan tower houses” is something that really doesn’t affect people who aren’t interested in Balkan tower houses. If you decide to go with historic as a key you’ll see that that tag is a bit of a dumping ground for all sorts of values. Some tags may have been voted on, most will not. castle type is a bit less so, but still has ad-hoc values.
Well, yes, I understand it’s a niche topic, that’s why I started with a forum post. So, if a local consensus is reached and the corresponding objects are mapped with that tag, a wiki page could be created just as documentation for future mappers, if I understood correctly?