Sure, the current way of tagging it is definately not the most optimal. I'd say it's more of a "reminder" type of a tag that can/should be changed to a proper tag once one discovers what that would be. I bet there are others similar ones in Finland for features that either didn't have a tag when inputted to OSM or for some reason the tag was not found from the wiki even if it existed (for non-natives it's often a challenge to figure out the magic words to locate something from the wiki).

Of course it would be even better to have some proper English key for this kind of devices (I'm assuming they might have similar ones in other countries?). There seems to flashing_lights=yes/no in wiki BTW which would be at least close, however, does it mean traffic lights type of flashing or is it more generic, it doesn't seem to have that much documentation either... ;-) However, I don't know if "välkky" itself generalizes as there seem to be many types of them and alv seems to be interested in keeping the different types too for now (it would be better in value than in a key though, at minimum).

While I understand why having wiki page on every tag would be useful for others (mainly for non-locals though), it's also rather heavy-weight for those who tend to map a lot and for example in case like this it also feels the benefits are not that high due to sparsity of the välkky devices to begin with and since it's unlikely to be the final key for these kind of devices for obvious reasons it would also likely duplicate some effort. Certainly if we know the canonical tag for something we use it and slowly convert the previously used ones to that format but mapping on large are obviously means that it would take lots of time to notice everything :-).

So, was it "mistake or redundant information", I don't believe you can say honestly you thought it would be either? That it only appears once doesn't mean it's a "mistake" and certainly you cannot decide if it's redundant information either as you don't even know what it means. Locals certainly might know what it is (I do and many mappers interested in city planning aspects likely do also) and even Google was clever enough when I pushed it slightly (it's not easy though if you don't have any clue what to look for). I suspect the other spots with "välkky" have used other tag or haven't just been tagged so far. ...So, what I said earlier still applies: find a better tag for it, or revert and let locals change it to a better tag at a later time (if there's some available, I don't know immediately nor have time to browse wiki to see if there would be some relevant tag).

See now, we end up spending again extra time on this pointless arguing. Your change was simply not good, I hope you could just accept it. In addition you probably have to accept that you might need too much local context to really fix these the way you're currently working (and perhaps some similar cases in the future you're likely to encounter if you keep doing these cleanups). I know there's lots of useful edits from this cleanup process you're participating in, also from you (I found at least one while checking your track record in Finland :-)). However, it would make it much less painful for all if you could please avoid touching keys which make absolutely no sense to you and seem like no obvious typos or such. And when you still end up occassionally making mistakes (who wouldn't), you would simply accept that a revert is the easiest way forward (less time wasted and more productive work done). No need to explain like you did as the local likely knows already enough as he/she gave you feedback which you hopefully value (if this kind of error repeats itself, I simply recommend that you say to the next mapper giving feedback that you'll leave it to the locals to fix when they come across it, they also care for the data like you do)!

And btw, I'm quite sure that alv still remembers and would have told you if you would have asked! And even better, we'd have avoided this whole episode if you would have asked _first_ and acted only after that when you know what it means :-).

I wrote to some previous guy who just removed stuff something along these line: Because of these random removals, those people doing the hard work of surveying need nowadays fear for their tags (especially if there are not yet that many of the particular tag). I hope you understand this mapper/surveyer perspective also when removing anything :-) (which is much more than what I could achieved by simply telling you what "välkky" is). Thanks.

Spoiler: "välkky" is a device that blinks or otherwise highlights the crossing traffic sign poles when it detects nearby pedestrians (or bicycles). Usually installed close to schools or some such "sensitive" places. There are at least dozens of them installed in Helsinki region alone.

And my apologies for writing so long reply, I just cannot keep replies neat and short like some other people.

Please please, you're modifying something in Finland and don't have clue what languages we use around here? Perhaps you should not modify in Finland at all then since you're clearly not used to our tagging environment.
The use of name:fr* is obviously some auto-completion error of an editor program, not an error of the mapper who was trying to type name:fi. The error should have been CORRECTED not REMOVED like you did. If you REMOVE rather than FIX errors, nobody else has the opportunity to do the RIGHT FIX since the error would be only available in the history now and no QA tool nor a mapper is going to catch it from there (luckily I caught you from the history since you also did other incorrect edits in Finland so I had to check your track record to see if there are other bogus fixes too). ...And it's not redundant information like you're trying to imply which also shows that you don't even seem to understand how bilingual naming does work in OSM which is a serious issue if you touch any names in bilingual country such as Finland.

This fix was counter-productive. Please find the real name:* postfix or just revert!

Why did you remove välkky and provided absolutely no replacement for it (nor did you tell honestly what you did in your changeset comment)? Please revert or find a better tag, if you don't know what it is, please simply revert without asking me to spend extra time on explaining what it is (I'm beginning to get very tired of constantly complaining to about these "fixes" that randomly remove tags without any sensible process to prevent data loss). Also, don't leave it as is and force me to poll and revert (as if I would remember), which is what I've had to do with the previous removers changes, unfortunately.
I suppose this edit was is due to taginfo cleanup process which should definately fall under Mechanical Edits Policy and its review clauses but each and every mapper removing data so far have claimed that it magically doesn't. I don't believe you or them did randomly end up seeing this particular node in your editor but rather you used computer assisted search to get the nodes you edit (the search runs on Taginfo computer or on overpass) that should definately make them subject to MEP.

Thank you.

Olisi varmaan parempi tehdä tuo Mustikkamaan liikuntapuisto leisure=sport_centre:nä koko tuolle alueelle kattaen kaikki kentät ja huoltorakennuksenkin ja jättää se pois tuolta itse kentältä.

Nää pitäis olla highway=service kyllä varmaankin.

Tällä talolla pitäisi ilmeisimmin olla molemmille kaduille osoite, korjasin niin että lisäsin sen 30:n omana nodena ja muutin tämän takaisin Professorintie 2:ksi.

Laittaisin mielummin alt_name:ksi ton Malmin jäähallin. Ja se ei muuten taida olla muuten enää Vaunula Areenakaan, kun sain sen nimen vaihdettua vihdoin joku aika sitten, se vaihtui taas joksikin muuksi tosi pian. En nyt valitettavasti muista enää mikä se nyt olikaan tällä hetkellä, kun en ole muistanut ottaa ylös ohikulkiessani.

--
i.

Hmm, mielenkiintoista... Osaatko kertoa miksi opasteessa lukee "väärä nimi":

osm.org/node/665155581

?

I've reverted this now so that we won't forget to do that.

Ah, now I got. You seemed to remove duplicate object but please put a proper comment next time. The highway=footway was bogus addition though I think and I removed that.

Why why why? What are you doing and why? This has nothing to do with alignment!

While I somewhat agree with you on current usefulness of these particular tags (which is why I said only "questionable" :-)), I think that the problem is deeper in this process. That is, now it's only you alone who decided that these two in particular are not needed. ...It could be some other tags next time and therefore mappers who survey things would now need to fear for their work vanishing due to some deciding to remove from OSM because of housekeeping efforts :-(! I suppose that also you'd acknowledge that some other mapper might not be as careful as you might be. In addition, even if this "error-correction process" through feedback from locals (or from DWG) works as constructively as with you, it takes some amount of time from both of us to write, which is away from other mapping related things.

So the situation here is like this: Both of us know these tags are (likely) correct (match reality) and were acquired through laborous means of survey. As such, it's only question about whether this information (in addition to smoothness or other suggested alternatives) is wanted to be kept in OSM or not? And here comes the problem where I think that the mechanical edit guidelines would offer some level of protection against somebody just deciding that other peoples work (survey+data input, even if the data amount currently are minuscule on planet wide scale) is not worth keeping at all as it would allow feedback. This is the reason why I think (IMHO) it would be wise to subject especially this kind of removals under mechanical edits policy, whereas applying it to trivial typo fixes on the other hand would be way too heavy handed (and would just make people to ignore guidelines or avoid doing useful cleanup efforts). Do you see what I mean? And do you agree that mechanical edits policy might make careless removals less likely or occur?

Avara (name) and avara=spacious (adjective) are also two different things :-).

Typo fixes are very good and useful indeed.

But I wonder if you really understood why we think that both vuokra-asuntoja=yes and arava=yes are useful? It's common to categorize housing types in Finland to: vuokra-asunto (rented house/apartment), asumisoikeusasunto (might be Finnish concept, 30% of the price is paid when living starts, has higher monthly costs than owned houses/apartments), and omistusasunto (owned, usually one needs mortage to buy one unless very rich). Such classification is very useful to have in OSM. I don't care about actual keynames so if you can find some globally used keys for these, feel free to change into them but removal of "vuokra-asunnot=yes" makes such classification later (if some data user wants) impossible. Then there are sub-systems to these which you have encountered such as ARAVA and HITAS (the latter is specific to Helsinki so you would also encounter it in some buildings here). While the data is currently far from complete, acquiring it is very valuable as it might no be readily available when standing front of the building (e.g., some come from construction time signage or official PD docs).

I forgot to comment on your question, I don't remember seeing a tag to indicate such subsidy in wiki but that obviously doesn't prove that there wouldn't be such tag :-).

And, btw, now that I remember to mention, the "spacious" would have been spelled "avara" not "arava" so you were at least close with that, just too much google auto-correction perhaps :-).

I think it was actually alv who started to use it to indicate that that building is under that loan system but we keep close in touch at least in IRC. But if I'd be starting from scratch atm, I'd probably make the meaning more obvious that this is Finnish thing by having it as fi:arava=yes but changing just one of them wouldn't be that nice.

Yes, now you've found the true meaning of it. I find it very encouraging that you really tried to lookup it now! And yes, I know it's derived from brand name (and as such is bad practice to have it in OSM keys). But on the same time any loss of such surveyed information would be acceptable too especially given the fact that most Finns likely would recognize what it tried to describe.

BTW, there's big contrast with your constructive approach to criticism here :-), rather than blaming local community practices like I had to happen with the previous cleanup guy whose changeset I had to comment.

Again, this is somewhat questionable edit. Information is clearly less and more subjective with smoothness than with rocks/roots.

Are you removing / replacing name=* with name:fi=* in all these changes? Please fix them so that name=* and name:fi=* are same!

...And, in case you edit in some "kunta" that has Swedish majority, then name comes from name:sv (similar to the first name selection of streetname signs).

And, thanks for adding the name:sv=*, it certainly is useful.