Proposal talk:Evaporation basin

Looks good to me. I'm in favor of deprecating reservoir_type=evaporator, moving to basin key. --Cmuelle8 (talk) 05:16, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Have you considered that the current documented values for basin=* are all rainwater-specific? It seems there is an (unemphasized) allocation from industrial water to landuse=reservoir (and reservoir_type in consequence) and rainwater management to landuse=basin. Is it a long term goal of yours to migrate the other reservoir_types to basin values as well? If it is not and your intention gets lost in time, there may very well be another proposal in a couple of years recognizing that allocation and attempt to move evaporators back, I suppose. Or the other way around: Why is the proposal limited to the evaporator value of reservoir_type key only? --Cmuelle8 (talk) 05:29, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

This proposal is the second of three proposals intended to deprecate landuse=reservoir and replace it with natural=water and water=reservoir -- so that's really the overall strategy. The intent is to fully deprecate reservoir_type=*. An important step towards this is removing features from reservoir tagging that don't really belong there. I'm deliberately doing this piecemeal to ensure community support at each step. Here is the sequence of proposals:

• Proposed_features/Tailings_pond
• Proposed_features/Evaporation_basin
• Proposed_features/Reservoir

--ZeLonewolf (talk) 06:08, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for your detailed answer. --Cmuelle8 (talk) 05:01, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

There is a small inner conflict that remains on my side, which revolves around the word 'natural'. It somehow does not feel right in this context, because the 'water' aggregations we're dealing with do not appear 'naturally', but because of human work, speak modification of the natural state. Maybe this was the reason, why people chose 'landuse' in the first place - because that term (to an extend) implies human intervention. Thus, you could view landuse=reservoir as a shortcut to tagging landuse=industrial + industrial=water + water=reservoir. --Cmuelle8 (talk) 05:09, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

To defend 'natural' you could quote from natural=*,

features, including ones that have been modified or created by humans

and tell data users that the extend to which a specific reservoir is used industrially depends not only on the type of reservoir but by 'how' it is used by a group of people. For example, drinking water held by a locking dam is a setting with multiple roles, industrial, recreational and ecological, thus natural ones. This leads us to an argument that a clear discrimination between industrial=water and natural=water cannot clearly be done in any (all?) reservoir settings. Ok, if we cannot objectively do it, maybe we do not have to, at all. But then, why prefer 'natural' as the super key for all reservoir types when in reality they reside on a spectrum between industrial ←→ natural, depending on specific type?

Deprecated tag landuse=reservoir made you a favor in not raising these issues, because it hid the industrial and natural dimensions of objects tagged with it. By relating to 'natural' in the new tagging scheme you potentially buy in great errors when refering to reservoirs that rather live on the industrial end of said spectrum. --Cmuelle8 (talk) 05:41, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Why not combine with salt ponds?

Resolved: keep the proposal narrow in scope to assure passage. Follow-on proposals can come later.

It looks overall good to me and I surely support it when the time will have come.
However, why proposed basin=evaporator + resource=salt isn't proposed as a combination with landuse=salt_pond?
Wouldn't this cause issues to let a particular value out of the scope of evaporation basins? Fanfouer (talk) 21:11, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Certainly it is possible to combine these tags together, since they use different keys. However, I was concerned that doing something like this would create a duplicate tagging scheme for salt ponds, and I am not in favor of deliberately creating two ways to tag the same feature, or giving the appearance that I am trying to deprecate the salt pond tag, which has 11,000 usages. I assume that the community will have the opinion that "salt pond tagging isn't broken so we shouldn't change it. Though I agree that you lose the ability to have all types of evaporation bodies under a single key. --ZeLonewolf (talk) 06:19, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

as Fanfouer, I don't see any added value in not putting salt pond under the same generic schema. The migration could even be done by a bot (after approval by the community) --Nospam2005 (talk) 20:02, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

There is also the immediate issue that salt ponds have a specific rendering style. If we ask mappers to stop using landuse=salt_pond, they will also lose salt pond rendering. I tend to thing that alone would make this a non-starter. --ZeLonewolf (talk) 22:32, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I don't see any issue here, a bot can add the new tags, we can ask the renderers to render the new tags and when it's done, depreciate the old tags. --Nospam2005 (talk) 13:39, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

although favorable to the idea, we already know how difficult it is for the community to depreciate a tag. so I'm rather in favor of a proposal that does this for only one tag. it's always possible to open this debate if this proposal is accepted --Marc marc (talk) 14:14, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Nice to see this discussion going well here :) The point isn't to necessarily deprecate landuse=salt_pond immediately but to introduce water=basin + basin=evaporation + resource=salt as a valid combination beside existing landuse=salt_pond. It could only reinforce and make the proposed tagging even more legit Fanfouer (talk) 18:11, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

I am all for making tagging consistent, and with a good ontology. After all, that's exactly what I'm trying to do with reservoirs. I like the thinking that both of you are putting forth on the end state for salt evaporators, and I would surely support an effort to do that. But I think we all know realistically how hard it is to get tagging deprecations and bulk changes through as well as effect change in renderers and downstream consumers, which is why I'm trying for the smallest possible change that I think everyone would agree with -- move evaporators out of reservoirs and leave landuse=salt_pond alone. Given all of this -- are there any changes you feel are needed in the proposal as it is currently written in order to allow for this future expansion but not lose community support? --ZeLonewolf (talk) 04:44, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Nothing against doing that separately later, we can first have this layer done, and when the coating its dry to put a second layer ;-). That's what you and Marc_marc suggest and I also guess Fanfouer will be fine with that --Nospam2005 (talk) 12:00, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Sure, our point isn't to deprecate or replace anything on this voting round. It's only about stating water=basin + basin=evaporation + resource=salt is a valid combination beside existing landuse=salt_pond. Not more, not less;

That would be good to keep landuse=salt_pond on large areas containing many ponds and describe each basin with individual polygons with water=basin + basin=evaporation + resource=salt. Fanfouer (talk) 20:55, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

While this sounds good conceptually, data consumers already interpret landuse=salt_pond as a waterbody. In any case, if you're looking for an enclosing landuse, I would think landuse=industrial is what you're looking for. --ZeLonewolf (talk) 20:59, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

landuse=industrial could be inappropriate in such situations 298883315 298883315 (see it's already combined with natural=water like 51% in general). Let's not change landuse=salt_pond meaning but encourage to combine with proposed tagging that would be enough Fanfouer (talk) 21:08, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I'll raise raise the question on the tagging list in order to get a wider opinion. --ZeLonewolf (talk) 21:34, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

This posting has brought me here. I think replacing landuse=salt_pond with water=basin + basin=evaporation + resource=salt is misleading in some situations. In cases that I've looked at salt ponds are often existing wetland with relatively small modifications to prevent mixing with other seawater. In such cases this substitution feels like making natural=bay a special case of harbour=yes just because they can both offer some protection from adverse weather. --InsertUser (talk) 12:21, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

How about evaporating cooling water?

Resolved: Cooling basins are covered by a separate (proposed) value

Some industrial facilities like Palo Verde nuclear power plant make use of grey water to cool down and then drain it towards evaporation ponds.
Is it useful to complete the usecases list of this proposal or do you consider them as cooling ponds?
One important difference between cooling and evaporation ponds is the last doesn't have any discharge or water return loop Fanfouer (talk) 21:11, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Most likely you are more of an expert than I am on these things. How are those tagged today? There are 35 usages of basin=cooling which sounds more correct? What do you think? Since no deprecation is required, I think that basin=cooling could simply be documented without going through the proposal process. --ZeLonewolf (talk) 06:22, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Here to be honest, I'm unsure. The purpose is to cool, the method is by evaporation. As cooling towers also use evaporation principle, it sounds logic to continue to use basin=cooling. In both cases there is no resource you are gaining through the evaporation (except cold). So I would mention it in the process, mentioning that current schema basin=cooling is fine. --Nospam2005 (talk) 20:16, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Ethanol

First I read that evaporation basins are for evaporating water, but later on, "ethanol" is mentioned as well. Is this for evaporating only water, or also different substances? --Dieterdreist (talk) 21:08, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Good question! I am not an expert, but ethanol production was one of a number of industrial usages of "evaporation ponds" when I researched it. From the limited research I've done, the purpose is to evaporate water from the "spent wash" of the ethanol distillation process, and thus would still be evaporating water. I am certainly open to correction by people that know more about ethanol manufacturing. --ZeLonewolf (talk) 21:20, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Why not following the rationale of man_made=tailings_pond?

Sorry for the late topic, but I just would like to clear on doubt that sprung from reading the proposal compared to Tag:man made=tailings pond. Like with the man_made=tailings_pond, why not use the man_made, instead of basin? Is there a thought of reason to differentiate the "mother" tag? Is it because it purposely uses water (rain, river, etc.) to create the evaporation afterwards? --AntMadeira (talk) 21:09, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

The consensus on the list (for example) was that evaporation basins fit in along with basin=detention, basin=retention, basin=infiltration, basin=cooling, etc., while the consensus was that "tailings" were specifically not water and shouldn't be grouped in with water features -- hence the move to man_made=* for tailings ponds. --ZeLonewolf (talk) 21:18, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense. Thanks. --AntMadeira (talk) 21:29, 15 February 2021 (UTC)