Continuing the discussion from Tagging stormwater drains which are not manholes, I have prepared an overwiew page for all kinds of road covers and inlets as a base to review the actual tagging:
I don’t think inlet=grate/kerb_grate is a sufficient standalone tag, and I’d welcome something like man_made=storm_drain.
As for military=manhole, I would stick to man_made=manhole and add the actual function to the military=*-tag, e.g. man_made=manhole + manhole=military + military=demolition_chamber. I’m sure that most people would not recognize them by their function, so these would be tagged as man_made=manhole 99% of the time anyway (at least initially).
The problems of inlet=grate should be explained, as others are features on =pipeline , waterway= , or =kerb , only attached. I don’t see why standalone features should be different, eg there are both barrier= on the highway= road, and =fence or =wall alone.
I have been doubtful of using utility= from traffic_cabinet= onwards, as the purpose and content is not always the same. manhole is less worse, but eg =heat and =cold can have feed or return water in a different loop with the =plant which isn’t heating or cooling.
The tank trap holes don’t look manhole-sized, thus should not be =manhole anyway?
For demolition, I’m wondering if manholes have a depth connotation for a human to climb inside, depending on how deep the chambers are?
man_made=manhole + military= could be used similar to building=bunker + military=bunker to distinguish structure and function, allowing disused:military= , or eg =demolition_chamber without looping back to manhole= again.
There are other “inlets” as standalone tags already, like those applied to an inlet of a stream into a culvert tagged as inlet=direct or inlet=screen etc. On the other hand there are 220 man_made=storm_drain already, so I do not see much reason not to use this tag additionally to inlet=grate.
This may apply to the road covers of the blasting_chambers (pic 1) but not for the swiss type concrete shaft (pic 2) or the mounting holes for tank traps (pic 3).
They look like manholes but are to small for a person to enter and not designed for this purpose. You are right that these covers should not be tagged as manholes, the same for the swiss type.
I still favour a military tag for those object and now think we should go straight for
Anyhow these are exotic objects, not many of them left nowadays. A simple solution should do best.
The tags manhole=drain, sewer, power, telecom have the very same meaning like the corresponding utility tags and it does not make much sense imo to use 2 different keys for the same purpose.
For the water and gas pipeline valves this is different. The substance tag used for those cannot be replaced by utility tags, as these 2 keys have a different meaning. The utility tags could probably be added but I’m not sure if that would also add real value.
As soon as there is some consensus about the raised questions/suggestions I will update the affected wiki pages and I’ll be happy to add more sample pics to the road inlets and covers list then.
accoding to the suggestions in the overview list. Also create a Wiki page for waterway=drainage_gutter as per top 5 of the OP.
Next step would be decision about how to handle existing storm drain inlets actually being tagged as man_made=manhole + manhole=drain + inlet=grate/kerb_grate.
No, I wouldn’t. A drainage gutter is a man made small channel, either prefabricated and made of metal, plastic or concrete, or or constructed on site of concrete or stone as shown in the various sample pics in the overview list (linked in the OP).
A rough ditch digged into the natural ground across a path or track is not a gutter imo. I would tag one of those as
waterway=ditch
intermittent=yes
ford=yes
There may be cases where such a ditch is lined with some stones or patches of concrete making it more difficult to distinguish it from a gutter but in all the cases I have seen myself so far the difference is very clear.
Anyhow such ditches are serving as storm drainage and we already plan to recommend the (already in use) tag man_made=storm_drain to be added to all inlet=grate.
Would it make sense to summarize all kinds of such storm drain objects by adding the tag man_made=storm_drain? Like: