Thank you, tekim, for consisely explaining the procedure to me. That looks very reasonable and I'll use that approach for my next large edit.

Dear G1asshouse,

To change the topic back to the original constructive discussion, I am still eager to know how you would approach and resolve the issue that OSM contains a large quantity of redundant and duplicate data.

Best regards

Casper

Dear G1asshouse,

Your personal accusations mean nothing to me.

Best regards

Casper

@Korgi1

1. There's no point in playing the victim. You know as well as everybody else that OSM in general prefers British spelling over American spelling. You can also compare former color=* usage (see this changeset) with https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/colour#chronology . You'll find the same trend for other keys where GB & US spelling differ.

2. That's not eurocentric, that's a global thing. See https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/colour#map for reference.

@G1asshouse

> The mailing list is the agreed upon final community discussion location. Just because you've isolated yourself with like-minded people, on discord, does not make it an appropriate alternative to the mailing list.

I find it funny that you think I have “isolated myself with like-minded people”, because it shows your lack of familiarity with the Discord server. You’re very welcome to join it and participate in discussions and chatter.

I’m absolutely not bringing every tag change I make to the mailing lists. What’s the threshold for contacting them? Ten changes, a hundred, a thousand? Getting bogged down in bureaucracy would mean that none of us will have any time left to just map. I’m sure you wouldn’t mail them for a tag change from highway=Residental to highway=residential, I’m doing exactly the same except I’m doing it on a larger scale.

> My point that you do not know if there are OSM editors whom prefer to tag with color instead.

I don’t need to know that. What you, I and all other mappers need to know is that color and colour mean 100% exactly the same, that OSM has a guideline to choose British over American English, that colour is many times as popular as color and that data/map users find our data more useful if it is consistent. I contributed to that in this changeset and others and you're very welcome.

> "You are still free to continue to use or interpret this tag as you see fit"

I interpret this tag as a tagging mistake or deprecated variant of roof:shape=* and I use it to find roof shapes for buildings and building parts.

How (else) would you interpret it?

Dear DeBigC,

Thank you very much for your patience and understanding with my abrupt changes. My apologies for causing conflicts in your edits and for not consulting the Irish community beforehand. I'll be very sure to do that next time I'm planning large edits specifically in and around Ireland.

If you wish to join a broader discussion about the legitimacy of similar map edits, there's currently an OSM-Talk mailing list discussion going under the title "[OSM-talk] Mechanical Edit?", sparked by another changeset that I created.

Best regards

Casper

My apologies to G1asshouse, I'll reply properly to you when I have more time.

@maraf24 Thank you for demonstrating that our map/database contains many different inconsistencies. I cannot fix all issues on my own, so if you think parks shouldn't have a colour, please file a JOSM and iD issue so the validator can pick it up the next time someone tries to edit something similar, and help us by fixing the currently existing "coloured parks" with the overpass query I mentioned.

Concerning that one building you mentioned, it was already tagged as a building with building:colour=grey before I came along. I did not change that and I did not decide anything at all.

@maraf24 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Ask the mapper who originally mapped color=* there.

You can run an Overpass query with ["leisure"]["colour"] to see if this kind of issue occurs more often, and thanks to me you don't have to check both ["leisure"]["colour"] and ["leisure"]["color"] to get a complete result.

Hello DeBigC,

You're right, I should have contacted the Irish community for a changeset of this size. I thought that updating duplicate and deprecated tags was a helpful thing. I'll share some relevant documentation with you:

I updated ~50% of building:roof:shape tags, there used to be nearly 100k. Other changes were not that large. Both Taginfo and Wiki already show clear preferences for certain tags. I made the data more consistent.

https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/compare/building:roof:shape/roof:shape
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/compare/building:roof:colour/roof:colour
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/compare/building:roof:material/roof:material
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/compare/building:roof_shape/roof:shape
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/compare/building:roof:levels/roof:levels
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/compare/building:roof:height/roof:height
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/building%3Aroof#values

osm.wiki/Key:building:roof:shape
osm.wiki/Key:roof:colour
osm.wiki/Key:roof:material#Possible_tagging_mistakes
osm.wiki/Key:height#Possible_tagging_mistakes
osm.wiki/Simple_3D_Buildings

Optimistically speaking, even if a few hundred people are subscribed to the mailing lists, they still don't represent the entire OSM community. From that POV, the Discord server does a better job, even though it's a side channel.

The Wiki already lists color=* as deprecated and searching for key:color redirects you to key:colour.

We are making geospatial data so it can be used. Using data is easier when there are No multiple tags that mean the same thing, especially if one is barely in use compared to the other and is also marked as deprecated. I set out to fix that and make it consistent for everyone who wants to use colour data. You're very welcome.

The automated edits code of conduct lists obvious typo fixes as acceptable usage. That's what I did.

I'm not presenting a full plan to the mailing lists either when I fix highway=residental or =Residential. That level of bureaucracy would stagnate OSM completely. Changes like this just need to be done.

> It's very difficult to review a single changeset with 3200 changes.

It's even more difficult to review 3,2k changesets with 1 change each. Choices have to be made and seeing that no one had taken up the job of updating these tags, I made this choice. There is no single solution that pleases everyone, but changes like this still need to be made.

If you can find or make a tool that splits up changes by geographic area, I'll happily use it, and I think several other mappers would also be very happy with it.

> that archavi link posted earlier errors out

That's a complaint to send to achavi rather than to me. Many changesets are larger than this one, imports for example.

You mean you want me to look at all 3,2k buildings individually and replace the same tags over and over again? The ctrl+F tool was invented and implemented specifically for this kind of usage.

In that case you can easily use achavi (https://overpass-api.de/achavi/?changeset=108548780) to zoom in to your area and review each specific object separately.

It's simply not feasible to split up thematic map changes per county, unless you know of a JOSM tool that can perform that kind of action.

Furthermore, you didn't answer my question: how would you prefer to review my 3,200 changes?

Who are you to dictate norms to anyone? OSM does not know the concept of authority. We collaborate. I fixed your tags, you're welcome.

"data consumers can easily translate" - or we can just produce good data in the first place, which is what I'm doing.

Of course a few "color" vs "colour" tags is not a life and death situation. Neither is the fact that I'm taking my time to fix them. I prioritise good data over my bbox size and I suggest that you do the same.

Nobody wants to do the same edit separately for each state, and even then people would complain about state-wide edits that are only a few hundred changes. Changes like this just need to be done.

Of course I wouldn't create tiny edits across the globe in a single changeset, but this one is large enough to warrant the large bbox.

Then how would you prefer to review my 3200 changes: in 10, 100 or 1000 changesets? How many people would bother to review 1,000 very similar tiny changesets?

There is no sweet spot that will please everyone. There are just a whole lot of outdated and erroneous tags. I just fixed a lot of them to make OSM data more consistent and understandable for data users and analysts.

commentaar is incorrect. Moet zijn: "oude 3dShapes opgeruimd, opritten toegevoegd, paar wegen recht gelegd"

Workflow is as follows:

1. Browse Taginfo & Wiki for common tagging mistakes and deprecated tags.
2. Run a global query with overpass-turbo.eu, in this case nwr[“color”]. (If tags have too much or too little usage for a global query, use a bbox or country search area instead.)
3. Load in JOSM.
4. ctrl+F --> color=* and colour=* --> remove color=*.
5. ctrl+F --> color=* + “building:colour”=* --> remove color=*.
6. ctrl+F --> color=* + building=* --> update color=* to building:colour=*
7. ctrl+F --> color=* + “building:part”=* --> update color=* to building:colour=*
8. ctrl+F --> color=* --> update to colour=*
9. Press upload just to run the validator.
10. Update some outdated roof tags (like building:roof:shape=*) in the same way with ctrl+F.
11. Fix other issues that the validator picks up.
12. Run the validator again to check if the fixes work.
13. Upload all changes.

All in all it takes a couple of hours to do.