Good day everybody,
voting has started for the tag natural=fiery_fountain, you can find the proposal and voting page here: Proposal:Tag:natural=fiery fountain - OpenStreetMap Wiki
People have only managed to find 2 of these around the world. It clearly isn’t worth voting on.
Moreover, it seems to be an entirely made-up name - a translation of the Italian words in “Fontana ardente”. There isn’t a British English name in common use for this sort of thing (for obvious reasons - there aren’t any there), and there isn’t even an English wikipedia article for the concept! There does appear to be an American English version. Someone native to there may be able to say whether that’s a common concept or a “wikigenesis”.
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this sounds like the natural thing to do then, invent an English word for the tag. 
Interestingly, a similar term has found entrance in the English language: nuee ardente, maybe using the term fontana_ardente could be an alternative to coining a new term?
I concur that voting could seem an exxageration, although there are probably more than just 2 of these (see e.g. French Wikipedia, which has a list of examples. Fontaine ardente — Wikipédia ), I agree these a very rare. Still, creating some documentation seems perfectly fine as these are distinct (and curious) features, and the proposal process is a good way to collect and integrate feedback from others.
There already is a Wikipedia entry for this sort of flame : Eternal flame - Wikipedia , which at the same time suggests the correct way to name this phenomenon .
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That’s certainly better, although it’s a list of mostly man-made ones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_flame#Naturally_fueled_flames on the same page is a natural list - I’d suggest looking in OSM at how they are tagged currently.
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Eternal flame is way better than fiery fountain and according to WP this is not only used for man_made flames but
some are natural phenomena caused by natural gas leaks, peat fires and coal seam fires …
If necessary the difference between natural and man made eternal flames could be specified by a subtag or by using different keys like man_made=eternal_flame and natural=eternal_flame.
For “fiery fountain” I voted “no”.
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@gabriele_sani Do you feel the same? Am I only dreaming? Is this burning an eternal flame?
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First of all thanks everybody for chiming in, it’s great to see discussion sparking
- @SomeoneElse I get there are very few of them: the reason way I proposed this tag is that one of this fiery fountain is located nearby where I live, I visited it often and it was wrongly tagged as a volcano. I removed the tag and, since I found no tag to use, I proposed a new one. I didn’t tag it as natural=fiery_fountain because firstly I wanted to discuss it with the community. If the tag is approved I plan to find the various occurrency of this feature around and map them (but yes, I doubt I will find more of ten of them)
- @SomeoneElse The fact that there are few of them around for me doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve a tag. If there is no other way to tag it what other solution do you propose?
- @Map_HeRo I saw the wikipedia page for eternal flame but it was a bit of a “catch-it-all” term since it referred also to man made flames. If the community consensus is that eternal_flame is a better name for me it’s not a problem, but we would probably have to separate in man_made=eternal_flame and natural=eternal_flame
- @osmuser63783 sorry, I didn’t understand the message
- Yes, fiery fountain is a direct translation of “Fonte ardente”/"Fontaine ardente
". There is not a direct english name because, from my understanding, in Europe this phenomenon is present only in France and Italy
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it may be better in the sense that it is an existing word, but the connotation is usually that of a memorial, I’d rather tag these as memorial=eternal_flame, while the naturally occuring phenomenon should be clearly distinguished with its own tag (IMHO).
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@gabriele_sani Ah, sorry, it was a joke: I can’t hear the words “eternal flame” without that melody playing in my head, but the song is clearly not as well known internationally as I thought!
I would suggest you do some more research what English speakers call this phenomenon. @SomeoneElse’s link suggests it could be “burning spring”. In that case, something like natural=burning_spring could work. But as he said, you’ll want to find out if the term actually exists in English or if it was invented by the person who wrote the Wikipedia page. If no one on the forum knows, you could google the term to see you if you find it mentioned online (like here or look for it in another encyclopaedia. Others have mentioned “eternal flame”. Same thing, I would try to find out if it’s actually used for the natural phenomenon before settling on natural=eternal_flame.
Another thing you can do is search Taginfo. The search results show that =burning_spring is not currently used, while “eternal flame” has been used for memorials (memorial=eternal_flame) but not for natural fires.
If there are only 10 or so in the world, you could also try finding them first to see how they have been mapped. Maybe another mapper has already invented a suitable tag.
I can understand that you are reluctant to change the tags that others have used without community approval. So once you have decided on a tag, you could post about it here on the forum, and you could invite the others who have tagged these objects to join the discussion, or let you know if they disagree with your suggestion.
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I changed my vote from aproval to opposal because indeed eternal_flame is a much better name. At least a cursory search reveals that it is an existing term that is in use (not sure if it is the most common but probably it is; wikipedia would probably list alternative names but it does not). It does seem like all or almost all the mademan ones are indeed memorials, so documenting memorial=eternal_flame and adding natural=eternal_flame, possibly with recommendation to map it with tourism=attraction, as that seems sensible, would attract my vote of approval.
I went ahead and edited Way: ‪Yanartaş‬ (‪238778994‬) | OpenStreetMap in Turkey (also merged a node representing it with an area where the flames appear, it keeps changing by a few metres often) and added natural=eternal_flame.
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That sounds good to me and I’d say @gabriele_sani: go for it. It does not make much sense to spend too much time and effort in searching for a tag for a very special phenomenon existing just a handful times in the world. natural=eternal_flame fits well and definitely better than fiery_fountain.
It’s not that I would not like the term “fiery fountain”, in fact it sounds dramatic, but it makes also myself thinking about …
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As i wrote I have nothing against the name eternal_flame, and if the proposal does not pass I will probably go down this way 
I think it would make more sense to stop the voting, now, and to find a proper English word/phrase first. Right now, you force us to spend time to reject the proposal only because we did not find the proper naming in first place.
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I can stop it whenever I want? Then what is the correct procedure? I have to put it back in draft, make modification and at a later time start the voting again?
Yes, you can stop voting now and return to RFC. Let us find a better tag this week and start voting again on Friday or so.
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@skyper ok, I modify it and set the status in draft. I also have to remove the “Voting” section?
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Just mark the first voting period as abandoned and add a reason for it.
As i wrote I have nothing against the name eternal_flame, and if the proposal does not pass I will probably go down this way
to me eternal flame is connotated to a memorial, human created feature, and I could imagine the natural features are not „eternal“ because from time to time can go off (maybe with strong winds?), at least this is what the wikipedia article suggests („can easily be reignited“)
I am pretty sure human made eternal flames go off at times too :-D. (and probably have lasted for much shorter time than natural ones).
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