This is a follow-up entry to certain comments I’m getting on my other entries, related to tagging scheme inconsistency. I just want to explain this in a separate entry to be able to link to it every time certain argument is used.

Every country, nation and culture has own natural language definition (or, I’d say, “vision”) of certain terms, used in everyday life. However, OSM is an international project and OSM data is used regardless of borders. Therefore, having different definitions based on local vision makes OSM data inconsistent. In certain cases it could even make it really hard to interpret. Let me give some examples:

In Russian language, word “ангар”, derived from “hangar” is widely used for quick-assembly hemicylindrical buildings made of metal and used as warehouses in industry. If you will ask anyone in Russia, what is a “hangar”, they will say, that it’s obvious and will give you that description. For person from Britain it will unlikely make any sense, since in English “hangar” means “building for keeping an aircraft in it”. So, if the same British person will see thousands of building=hangar in Russia, located quite far from any airstrip, it will confuse him. Obviously, this is completely wrong usage of building=hangar and it should be actually mapped as building=warehouse, building:material=metal, roof:shape=round, roof:material=metal, building:levels=1or something. But if you’ll try to tell Russian mappers about that, many of them will complain, that it’s “too complicated”, and will continue using building=hangar just “because it’s obvious, everybody knows, that it’s called a hangar”. I know, because I tried. Finally, I just had to re-tag all these warehouses in area I’m watching.

Same thing with American understanding of “pharmacy”. In many other countries, “pharmacy” is a shop, where medications and medical supplies are sold. But in the United States it’s just another supermarket with everything from medications to food, toys and even electronics. Americans know perfectly what they call “pharmacy”. But if you’ll show some photos taken in Walgreens or Rite Aid to any person from country, where pharmacies are not a synonym of supermarket (whatever it is), they will never understand, why this business should be tagged shop=pharmacy, while Safeway (called “grocery store” in the United States) is not a “pharmacy”, even having a prescription medications department and selling basically the same range of products.

In OpenStreetMap, some people think, that it’s okay to rely on their local understanding of words used for tags instead of following documented definitions, because they think inside their own national context. I can’t do anything about it, since these people usually opposing the concept of OSM as semantic spatial database in favor of OSM as map (in form of pictures or something else). But I hope, those who can use logic instead of prejudices, understand this problem as well as I do.