Proposal talk:Linear Cairn

These look like abandoned stone walls: abandoned:barrier=wall

As mentioned "These are often called "stone walls" or "stone fences"" - and the pictures appear to show abandoned stone walls which formerly were used to demarcate boundaries between fields or properties. Often these were created by removing the stones from a field, so it could be used as meadow or plowed, and then the stones were piled up at the edge to form a wall. Since these are now abandoned and no longer function as a wall, I would suggest using the prefix abandoned:=* with barrier=*, so abandoned:barrier=wall. --Jeisenbe (talk) 02:18, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Personally, I think the "clearance cairns" is the most believable explanation for most of these, but really the point of this proposal is to not have to care about whatever historical circumstances lead to them, and just map them as they are now. --Morganwahl (talk) 06:42, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

In that case, if there are long piles of stones which are not clearly an old wall, why not use a simple, clear tag like man_made=stone_pile? This wil be easier to understand than "linear cairn" and it will translate better into different languages and cultures. This also avoids re-defining the tag man_made=cairn which currently means "a mound of stones, usually conical or pyramidal, raised as a landmark or to designate a point of importance in surveying" - so that requires that we know more information about the purpose of the pile of stones, and it wouldn't work in the examples that you've posted. --Jeisenbe (talk) 06:50, 1 December 2020 (UTC)