Proposed automated edit: remove guest_house=guest_house and playground:theme=playground where they add zero info

I propose to automatically remove guest_house=guest_house from tourism=guest_house
I propose to automatically remove playground:theme=playground from leisure=playground
There are some tautological taggings that add nothing and seems to be result of iD interface design.

Sometimes there is field encouraging to fill it and often it can be left empty. But one of values means nothing and iD auto filling suggested it, so people keep adding it. And it ended in suggestion because it was tagged few times, so become listed without human review.
And then become one of top suggestions and people started repeatedly adding it.
I propose to remove two such tags from any objects where they add nothing useful at all

Yes, these can be removed via validators in editors or manually.
But each such removal needs to be done manually, which is wasting human attention and effort. Especially given scale of these two.
Removal of these tags will make tagging of affected objects more clear and it will fix suggestions in iD by removing these entries from suggested ones.

Edit would be rerun in future from time to time.

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What is the currently best practice to encode “I have surveyed this playground and it has no theme” vs" the theme of this playground needs to be surveyed"?

Is there some other “null” value?

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no idea, but this tag seems so unimportant that it is not worth having one?

If I would have need to tag it then I would put playground:theme=no_theme via ATYL

I find the tag quite useful and having “none” values for survey-able features is quite helpful. My understanding (and how I have used and advised folks to use it) is that the “none” value for playground:theme is playground. I admit that looks somewhat silly but that doesn’t mean it’s not useful… I regularly use this key and others to find fun/interesting/engaging parks.

I appreciate you cleaning things up but that shouldn’t hinge on whether you think a tag is “important”. Do you have evidence that the key is skunked? I would expect playground to be the most common theme because most things aren’t themed and it’s completely fine to document this fact. If we want to help folks by changing what the “none” value is, I am in full support, but deleting them is incorrect afaict.

It makes sense to me to have a “none” value, and I don’t think playground:theme=playground is the right one - maybe… playground:theme=none? I’m so creative, I know. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I would love that to be the none value and would support a bulk change of “playground” to “none”.

The relatively common value “play” is also worth a followup. But now I am drifting off topic ha.

Are you confident that most of these are equivalent to playground:theme=none? (Taginfo)

The OSM Wiki page has documented playground:theme=playground as a tagging mistake since late 2021, and the tag has an interesting TagHistory graph:

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I would not assume that it is used this way in general, in practice this appears to be mostly random filling

I guess that it could be possible to ask every single person who ever used this tag and ask them to explain

the problem is that people who filled it this way, without checking is it themed playground or not, will simply not respond

I am not signing up for that as I suspect that large part of them was added blindly (many of this playgrounds will be unthemed as most of playgrounds are unthemed, but some are going to be themed)

+1 to using and documenting proper “no theme, it was checked”

iD started asking people to remove this tag via “upgrade tags” action

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Ugh. Blerg.

Okay, I’m sold. We begin anew.

@watmildon I suggest re-tagging the features you know are “unthemed” (because you or specific others tagged them as playground:theme=playground) before @Mateusz_Konieczny’s automated edit goes through, since that will ensure that the highest-confidence “none” confirmations are not lost, and will give the replacement tag a body of uses. :slight_smile:

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Yep. Already have things loaded into JOSM with the intention of having some base level of “none” in the DB.

I am considering dropping this part of proposal entirely, I prefer avoidance of risky bot edits.

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If it makes you feel better I just reviewed like 50 non-me tag edits that added this and they … aren’t great. But, up to you. I have been convinced and I am starting to think I’m the only person who used the tag as I described lol. Living in my own little world it seems.

:(

well, it is sad to discover that - but better to discover it earlier than later

and at least your tagging will be rescuable, let me know if you need help with finding all objects where you added this tag

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All good! Just think of all the unproductive tagging you’ve save me over the next 10 years!

In good news, I am now reviewing all the parks I added 5 years ago and … oh boy I sure know a lot more about mapping and tagging now.

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Regarding the playgrounds I currently oppose this proposition.

Yes. My view is rather limited. In Germany we use the playground:theme=playground as a way to express that this is your run of the mill public playground with no special theme in mind. Most people here will have a mental picture which covers most of our “non themed” playgrounds.

This way, the tag works as “this has been surveyed” tag and as “this playground ain’t special” tag in one.

As this is already established use (haven’t checked the wiki for documentation yet, sorry), I oppose removing the tag.

if it is actually used this way I would really recommend using some less confusing tag and documenting such use at wiki

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I am currently not planning such edit, though I still think that this tag in current state makes no sense

I am not planning to touch it for now

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Thanks for the heads up though.

I’ll try to check the wiki and raise the topic with playground mappers.

Might turn out you’re right after all :slight_smile:

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