Talk:Tag:leisure=park/Archive 1

Do beaches qualify as parks?

NO ACTION:

Any decision on this topic would require a brand-new discussion with different participants. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 06:22, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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The topic heading says it all. Do beaches qualify as parks? Inquiring minds want to know. Personally, I don't think they do and it seems clear from the discussion above on how to define parks that they don't. It just be me though. Since other users think beaches can be parks. I'm not sure if they think all beaches are parks or just "their" beaches, but whatever the case, I'd like to get it figured out one way or another so we can all move on with our lives. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:50, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

In the USA, (I speak as a Californian), states, counties and cities with beaches, improving them as parks are improved (with parking, toilets, other amenities), often put these in a "Department of Parks" at whatever level of governmental jurisdiction. This is a fact of governmental organization: governments with beaches often name them or at least organize them as parks. However, this fact doesn't make a beach a park (as OSM defines leisure=park here). That said, I believe it is quite frequent that people aggregate into a larger category of "park" a much wider definition than what OSM defines here (manicured urban greenery for recreation, or so). This "more inclusive" definition of "park" isn't what we define on the Page, but it does explain (at least partly) why people conflate this (narrower) definition to include national parks, state beaches, historic monuments and many other "leisure areas" (which again, are often under the auspices of a governmental "parks department"). I say this not to defend continuing the OSM practice of tagging beaches with leisure=park (being prescriptive) but rather to say what happens (we could even say frequently) at least partly because in many people's minds, a "state park" that is a "state beach" gets blended together as a single semantic (being descriptive). By making this distinction between descriptive and prescriptive, I tone down the "right or wrong?" rhetoric and simply state: this is what people often do, and it sheds light on how we might best untangle semantics (meanings, which can be ambiguous and fuzzy) from syntax: tagging, which greatly benefits from being precise. I doubt we'll get to a quick and easy determination of whether a beach "qualifies" as a park without doing that first, so there it is: people do this (conflate beach with park), governments do this, many in OSM both have done this and continue to do this. And not only with beaches, it happens with other recreational areas from wooded areas to grasslands to beaches to deserts. I've been to many "desert parks" (which is what I, many others and governments call them, whether formally or informally) and while I agree those shouldn't be tagged leisure=park, in common vernacular they ARE called parks and governments DO put them in their "parks department." Rather than argue with Adamant1, I'll simply refer him here so he can see for himself that city beaches (Main Beach, Cowell Beach) are indeed part of the city's Parks and Recreation Department. Am I expressing an opinion as to whether they should be tagged as leisure=park? Especially as it recently had its focus sharpened? No, although it seems less likely that others are inclined to agree that Main Beach is "a park" as OSM defines it. It is a park (of sorts) as this city does (and county and state via THEIR Departments of Parks and Recreation), though in a strict OSM sense, there is only historical precedent for doing so from before the definition was more precisely stated. Let's not lose sight of the fact that historically in OSM, "park" has been poorly defined and because of that many taggings happened which today we might say are misunderstandings of those ambiguities and neither right or wrong at the time, but more like confused. It will take time to unconfuse the tagging, but we can strive to become better unconfused here about whether beaches are parks. Thanks for taking time to read and understand a lot of historical context of how we got here. Landuse, landcover and how we did tag them and how we do tag them are complex and evolving topics. The best we can do is discuss, listen and sharpen up our definitions after consensus. Tagging and rendering heal over time only after those are completed. Right now, it seems listening skills are paramount. Stevea (talk) 09:50, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Not that I mind you commenting, but I already know your opinion. I was hoping for someone elses ;) That said, it doesn't really matter what "government department" tends to things when it comes to how they are tagged or defined in OSM or the real world for that matter. For instance, toilet in a park is still tagged as a toilet. It doesn't matter its managed by the "parks department." Also, whoever runs the beach, doesn't change the meaning of "beach."

As far as your link goes, notice it says its Parks & Recreation, not just parks. Also here they split parks, beaches, and open spaces into three separate unique categories with their own pages. Know where on the beach page does it use the park in relation to beaches, descriptive or otherwise. Also, although I can't find it now because you resolved the note, the beach wrongly tagged as a park that instigated this is a private beach that's locked to public access. It was never a park and isn't even being used by anyone. So there's that. Which I was correct on the whole time, but didn't feel like arguing endlessly about.

There's also this gem here where you tagged a surfing area in the middle of the ocean as a playground and called it "cleanup." Whatever that is about, it at least shows your a little to lose on your tagging definitions. Whatever you want to say about "fuzzyness of definitions," "ambiguity", or "the complexity of the subject", a surfing area in the ocean is not a playground. I don't think OSM's definition of a park is that ambiguous either or that it should be judged on that use the tag their way. Peoples miss-tagging doesn't have anything to do with what a park is or isn't. Let alone how OSM defines one.

lastly, People usually ambiguity or similar trite meta analysis of a subject or the people discussing it as an excuse to continue what they are doing or to shout down dissenting view points. Just like when someone claims a subject is controversial when it isn't or any other similar tactic. In this specific case, I don't think the ambiguity matters if there is any, because we know pretty clearly what a park isn't. We just don't know what it is. For instance, we know its not a shark, a flat head screw driver, a sunset, or even a manhole cover. The question is, is it a beach? and there's already ample evidence that its not. That's a different thing, that doesn't involve fuzzyness in my opinion or at least it doesn't unless you make it about that, but there's zero reason it needs to be. Btw, everything is ambiguous to a degree. There's no reason it can't be ignored here like it is in every other situation so we can get this worked out. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:50, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Btw, another issue to this is that your not tagging the beaches as natural=beach + leisure=park. Your just tagging them as leisure=park. Then you claimed you were doing it because you were"extending" tagging. Its not "extending" tagging if you intentionally leave out a tag that should be there and then get an attitude when someone tries to add it. So, since your making it an all nothing thing, it's necessary to get an opinion on it once and for all. Otherwise, maybe I would have just added natural=beach to the "parks" in the first place and called it good, but you got an attitude about it and Santa Cruz doesn't consider them parks anyway. So here we are. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:03, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

The antagonistic tone is unwelcome. All are welcome to comment here, Adamant1 seems to say "I've got my mind made up, never mind what stevea says." Not only is that unkind, it is unproductive towards consensus as it becomes an ad hominem attack. There is no reason for that.

You opine "it doesn't matter what a government department says." While many agree with the sound logic of this, I clearly stated it as historical context for why many have tagged the way they have over many years.

You were and are mistaken as you mention "a private beach that's locked to public access." In California, all "beaches are public up to the mean high tide line;" there is no such thing as a private beach here. (I know of one local beach which is closed due to endangered bird species protection, that's different from access=private). There are coastal property owners who do a fine job of frustrating access to the public near or on their property, but public access to beaches is legally enshrined. So, whatever you were going to do to tag a beach private should likely be stopped before you do so with that in mind: it simply wouldn't be correct. access=no, maybe, in the case of a protected bird species, access=private, never. You say a beach "isn't even being used by anyone"? How the heck would you know, and what does that matter?!

The surfing area tagged playground is exactly that: a surfing area specifically set aside as a "safe zone" for kids to learn how to surf / practice surfing free from harassment by other adult surfers. It literally "marks a children's playground" (the definition from our wiki). And yes, it is a gem, as a locally cherished and beloved place for being uniquely what it is: a surfing playground. (It has been discussed before over the years, yet when its characteristics are described and critics or the unknowing learn of its true nature, volunteers leave the present tagging in place with no changes). Nor is it "in the middle of the ocean" (it is ~50m into the water at a beach), that is simply hyperbole on your part. By quoting the exact definition of tags and asking if they "qualify," one shouldn't be surprised to find tagging that does exactly that. Some children play on a jungle gym or swingsets at many playgrounds, they play at surfing at this one. No contradiction, no problem, except perhaps in your mind, which hasn't yet wrapped around the fact that this definition fits here. Why so strict in your interpretation of whether or not a definition fits? Sometimes doing so is a stretch, but there are circumstances, like this one, where a definition simply fits. Expand your mind to accommodate such actualities. Or better tag. Or coin a new tag. But don't say the way something IS tagged isn't true simply because you've never seen it. Being doctrinaire in OSM isn't for the faint of heart, as we have millions of contributors. There are things in this world you have not experienced, which are and will be new to you. A large reason why I contribute is to share what I know with the world, even if it is new to you. If you have never seen something before, it isn't necessarily wrong, it is simply new to you.

Calling my meta-analysis "trite" (simply more rock-throwing — everyone reading here can see that for what it is) isn't even true. This says my comments are overused and consequently of little import, while they are neither. Such discussion is neither an excuse to continue behavior (tagging) you disagree with, nor shout it down (a false assertion), it is Discussion! The name of this page! A discussion YOU started! We practice our listening skills here as we engage in consensus-building, polite discussion. We don't make questionable rhetorical ploys (well, successfully, anyway). I never said this subject was "controversial," so your false near-equivalence ("just like when") feels like you putting words in my mouth. Your assertion "we know pretty clearly what a park isn't" is simply false: it took us 15 years to better-define "park" and that just happened on the wiki in the last week. Such an attitude is disingenuous to real discussion: "don't bother me with historical context, I've got my mind made up." By stripping down the original question to "is a park a beach?" (or "is a beach a park?"), now we come closer to the spirit of what we (and hopefully others) might discuss here: that some people (whether part of OSM or not) consider beaches parks. They do. They are conflated in many people's minds, especially in coastal USA. That goes a long way towards explaining why people have tagged as they have, why confusion remains and perhaps even why you felt a need to ask the question. You assert "ample evidence" to the contrary, yet do not offer it; you can do better than that. And, no, not everything is ambiguous. 2 + 2 = 4 unambiguously. Language, words, definitions, tags in OSM, those can be and sometimes are ambiguous. It can be challenging to resolve these.

I have put natural (beach, wood...) tags on entire polygons of leisure=park, but I found that to be incorrect, as amenities (e.g. parking lots) are not "beach," whereas those amenities ARE part of the "park" which is the (state, county, city...) beach "area" (even as natural=beach wouldn't be a correct tag on the whole "park" polygon). Again, I offer longer-term perspective of how tagging evolved in OSM: putting a natural tag on an entire park or nature_reserve is still done, though I believe many would agree it is a deprecating tagging style in preference to separately using a natural tag where (and exactly where) it is appropriate. Such untangling (remapping, really) can be a fair amount of work, so it is understandable it hasn't happened in many cases. This explains a great deal of such "legacy tagging:" it met our definitions and conventions (often years ago and often simply "good enough for now") when these data and tags were entered, but as tastes change, ambiguities better resolve, definitions sharpen and renderers improve, the legacy data remain (we agree, this can be confusing). Please understand that many tagging strategies over OSM's history have had an approach of "draft 1, get data on the map...draft 2, improve them so they better follow tagging conventions." I'm not saying this is the right way to do things, I'm saying that it is often the way things happened. This is not me making something an "all or nothing thing," that would be (once again) you putting words in my mouth (or at least exaggerating) while leaving unrecognized that improvement of data and tagging in OSM is a step-wise series of improvements, sometimes over many years. I make no judgement about how this process occurred, it simply did occur. Improving our map data continues, nothing wrong (and everything right) about that. If you wish to complete natural=* tags on (especially larger) non-OSM-leisure=park and leisure=nature_reserve (multi)polygons, of course you are welcome to. Should you choose to do so, knowing historical context of why the existing tagging was considered correct at the time and how you are going to improve it for the present (and future?) seems an important consideration as you do. I share "OSM wisdom" with you as I say this.

Adamant1, I'm not sure you have much practice in consensus building. While these discussions do often end up "once and for all" defining things "so we can get on with our lives" (the former showing lack of understanding of the process of consensus, the latter showing impatience and taunting), this hurried, making-fun-of tone is the very antithesis of listening. Please don't force the issue, it is counterproductive to do so. And please engage in accuracy and fairness with your rhetoric, it is transparent to all and sundry when you don't. See if you can reply (or better, listen for a while) without ad hominem attacks, false equivalency, hyperbole, rock-throwing, untruths, exaggeration, putting words in other people's mouths or other easy-to-see losing strategies of good discussion. Thank you. Stevea (talk) 18:56, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Actually, your the one using the antagonist tone by endlessly opining about how other people should do more "listening" etc. I'm not the one telling you how to write your messages or critiquing your tone. I only care about if your facts are correct or not, and their not. Also, I don't have my mind made up about anything. Which is why I started this discussion thread in the first place. Which you high jacked. It would be a little weird if I'm 100% set in my ways about things but asking for other peoples opinions wouldn't it? Your obviously to opposed with "how things sound" to use that kind of obvious logic.

Also, I didn't say I don't care about how a local government categorizes things. What I said is that if something is ran by a certain department within a government, then it should tagged as the operator, but that who runs it doesn't change the nature of the object. Like in my example, a toilet is still a toilet know matter who runs it. It doesn't become a park because the parks department manages it. The actual issue I have is that the government entity you claim categorizes beaches as parks actually doesn't. If they did, id be just as happy saying they do. I don't care one way or another. I just care what the facts are and the fact is they don't. They don't in the link you provided and they don't anywhere else that I've looked. I'm happy providing more references to back up your failed one, but don't put words in my mouth and claim I'm saying things I'm not in the mean time. For someone that talks about the importance of listening you clearly do an extremely small amount of it.

As far as the ocean playground goes, it's stretching the definition a little. That's all. Nothing more, nothing less. I didn't claim otherwise either. So you can hem and haw all you want about how my mind hasn't wrapped around something, which is pretty antagonistic btw not that you care, but I just disagree with your tagging of it. Which I'm perfectly allowed to do. Just like I wouldn't tag a training wall at my local climbing gym that's set aside for children as a playground or the kids section of my local bookstore as one either, I don't think this qualifies as a playground. Feel free to put an access tag on it if you want or "come up with your own tag" as you say I should do, but it doesn't fit the definition of a playground. Unless you have a link for it, there's no where that the Santa Cruz says specifically that it's only a children's surf area either. Although it wouldn't matter if they did, since it would still be a access thing and not a "this is a playground because children do things there" thing. I'm perfectly willing to start a new discussion about it in the playground article that you can language police like this one. Btw, who's the one that's already made up their mind when they are the one saying that if someone doesn't like how something is tagged to bad and they should just invent their own tag for something somewhere else hhhmm?

As far as the access things goes, yes all beaches in California are public in the sense that "its one community and we all share blah blah blah" but in reality you can't go to a beach if it means crossing private property. Which is illegal. So not all beaches are public in the sense that 100% you can't access some because its illegal and unsafe to do so. Plus, the beach is still technically owned by the owner, who doesn't want people there whatever the law is. The specific beach I'm talking about happens to be down a hill that is only accessible from one path that is blocked by a locked and the owner of the property that the path goes through wont let anyone in. So its not "public" in any sense of the word. It's not maintained by the parks department either. Its a private beach. Which was your main argument for why it should be tagged as a park and not a beach. Its misleading and risky to tag private beaches that are illegal to go to as "public." Whatever the universal rule is about them. Especially in places highly trafficked by tourists. You might not care about it because your local and know the difference, but it doesn't mean other people will. In that specific case even the Santa Cruz was saying they would just let the owner have it and were discouraging people from going there. So its still dependent on the particular circumstances and what the local governments want to do. That's the problem with your universal statements that don't take specific examples into account.

"I have put natural (beach, wood...) tags on entire polygons of leisure=park, but I found that to be incorrect." I 100% agree with that. Its wrong to stack tags on a single polygon. That's why I posted this topic in the first place so we can figure out which one is better and just go with it. There's no reason the smaller beach area couldn't be mapped as a beach within a larger park area in cases where it fits, but it doesn't fit in this case because they just aren't parks to start with. I don't have a problem with doing it that way when its actually correct though. There's also the leisure=beach_resort tag for beach areas that are managed with bathrooms and whatnot. I think that is probably the more appropriate tag in a lot of these cases. You can go off about how things evolve and whatever in OSM, that's exactly what I'm doing by bringing this up here. I'm saying "hey these things were tagged as parks 7 years ago and there's better ways to map them now." Your not doing that by drawing a hard and fast line that involves language policing, how I should piss off if I don't like it and invent a new tag, etc etc instead of actually discussing the factual specifics. There's already perfectly fine new tags we can use. You just disagree with them and that's fine, but don't accuse me of things like not being mindful of OSM's history in the mean time.

As far as your last paragraph goes, I'll just say I have plenty of experience consensus building, but as I have repeatedly told you its not a competition about who has more experience then the other person. It takes zero experience in "consensus building" to know that a mountain shouldn't be tagged as parking lot and same for this. There's actual facts to back me up. That's all I need and care about. On the "fairness of rhetoric" accusation, again I'm not the constantly tone policing people like you are. If anything your the not fair in your rhetoric by talking down to me about how I should say things and the "speed" at which I should do them. I don't really care though. To me its a weak tactic and I don't need to use it. Your free to waste 90% of your message on that kind of thing if you want to though instead of talking about the facts. I don't really care. Honestly, your last message seems like a lot of projection. I've noted plenty of example above of where your doing exactly what your saying I'm doing, but again its not something I care about one or another. Again, the whole reason I started this topic is because I wanted to get outside opinions and to build consensus. If anything your the one against that because you've told me multiple times that you just do things locally how you do them and to bad, along with the fact that you were quick to comment on this instead of letting other people read it and comment first. I don't care if you comment, but flooding the topic with your long winded side tangents doesn't help people parse out the meaningful comments or the facts of the situation any. So maybe you could practice what you preach by not knee jerk responding and letting other people have a chance to comment before this gets to long for them to participate. Its not like you can't private message me about my "disrespect for OSM's history" or whatever other off topic, personal things you want to accuse me of. 10 bucks says you don't though. Btw, the next you feel like bringing up building consensus on something, it might help to remember your the one that repeatedly closed notes other people opened asking for outside opinions on things. Just saying. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:30, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

"There's also this gem here" - https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1128854959 was edited 7 years ago! Opening note (I did this) may be a good idea, but using it as an argument is absurd. Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 09:23, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

In general, I would not care too much about legal classification. Just because something is administered by department named like one of our tags does not mean that this objects should get that matching tag Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 09:29, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

To answer the question in the title - I would expect that typical ocean/sea beach is not a park, though park along sea/lake/ocean may include also beach in its area. For reference when I think about beach I think about something like https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maarup_%C3%98sterstrand_mod_nord.jpg or https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baie_des_Anges_Nice_plage.jpg or https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cala_Goloritze_o.jpgMateusz Konieczny (talk) 09:29, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Mateusz Konieczny, I agree it was a while ago. I wouldn't call it absurd though because he still maps things that way, as is evidenced by the defense of it. So its still a perfectly relevant example of how he "extends" tags to fit his definition. Thanks for opening the note about it. I would have done that myself, but in the past he closed a bunch of other notes I opened for similar things and refused to let them stay open for other people to comment on. So I didn't feel like wasting my time. Maybe you'll have better luck though.

Also, I agree with your definition of a beach. His definition is clearly just his. It's not one the parks department in Santa Cruz agree's with or anyone I've ever talked to that live in California. Maybe some people here think beaches are parks, I'm not going to speak for "all Californians," but if there are it's a small minority. It's clear know one else in the world defines beaches as parks. It's ridiculous to expect people who visit Santa Cruz to know when they are searching for beaches on an OSM map that they are finding parks instead because that's how he decided to define them. I know it's not even a local definition because I visit there myself and have asked people were beaches are. I've never once heard of them refereed to as parks. Know one a few hours away from there where I live refer to our beaches as parks either. Obviously there are beaches in parks, but that's not what he's miss-tagging. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:49, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

I find it amusing (to say "laughable" would be insulting and I wish to remain polite) that a suggestion we "listen more" is called "antagonistic:" what folly. I make suggestions on how you write your messages as they are rife with grammar and spelling errors ("your" instead of "you're", "to" instead of "too", "little to lose" instead of "little too loose", "something is ran"...) as well as elisions of entire words and sometimes downright unparsable sentences. If you wish to write sloppily, I can't stop you. But when people have little else by which to judge the points you make, your communication skills stand only as the actual words you type.

Some call it "backpedaling" when you say "it doesn't really matter what 'government department' tends to things" (I believe you meant "think") and "I don't care (what governments think)." Then, after I call you out for this, you say "I didn't say that, I said it should be tagged as operator." (When you didn't, at least in this section, though perhaps you did in another section/thread/changeset comment I recall). I believe we are in relative harmony about tagging operator=* on a park when it better clarifies who operates the park, should that clarification be needed. (And so, I added this to the Page, part of our wiki "How to tag" definition). We agree here. I don't believe or assert that "who runs it changes the nature of the object," I merely state (and re-state) that this is an important consideration of how and why these have been conflated in the minds of many and to explain a lot of past tagging over the years. For example, if I were to ask a Californian "Is a state beach run by the State Parks a state park?" there might be a lot of "sure, yes, of course" answers, and it is understandable why: the phrasing, context and in OSM's case the history really do matter, especially to explain existing tagging. (Tagging going forward, especially after this discussion, likely not so much). But when you strip the question down to "is a beach a park?" you might approach 100% no as your answer. Technically, semantically, asked like that, you seem correct. Legally, historically, in the minds of many because of how they are frequently conflated, not so much. This is my major point in this entire section: that tagging in OSM isn't always so strict, clear and black-or-white. We can agree to move towards clarity, and it is good that we do. But those conversations are happening here and now, the answers are not already determined because you say "look, black; look, white. The End." Your inquiring mind wants to know? OK, read. (Listen).

The ocean playground, it would appear, really IS a gem. I believe you meant that facetiously (which doesn't belong on a Talk page), whereas now, that might seem humbling. It DOES fit the definition of a playground, or I wouldn't have tagged it that way. Feel free to start up a similar Discussion/Talk page section of the leisure=playground wiki. Or, (as Mateusz and I recently did here), rewrite it with community input and consensus. (Or, as Mateusz did, leave a changeset comment). You'll need to develop that buy-in first, though, a wiki page reflects much more than your disagreeing opinion with another contributor. "The Santa Cruz" not saying so on a website doesn't make it not so: I have lived and surfed here for nearly forty years, and I say so; it's "ground-truthed local knowledge," widely agreed to be the best source for OSM data. Calling my behavior "language police" is inflammatory, as I am merely being a good OSM citizen, hewing to our conventions of agreement, often/usually to what we have wiki-documented, rather than "my opinion makes this so." (Again, listening skills are an important part of this). To answer your question, OSM itself is "the one" (and always has been) who says that coining a new tag is something we all have the power to assert in our map data. As does using them in "creative, productive, or unexpected ways," though of course, it is best to use established tags (syntax) for established things and ideas (semantics). The reasons that language systems, maps, and conversations/communication work in general is that there is enough signal to discern from the noise: syntax and semantics fit together (even if only roughly) like a transmission in a car. While there is no doubt that "new is certainly new" (meaning what hasn't been tagged before but really exists deserves a new tag, a new value on an existing key or perhaps even a whole new tagging scheme), agreeing on how and on what we do tag with existing tags is important, too. Or I wouldn't be spending much of a Sunday typing here.

The "mean high tide" law in California says what it says. So do trespassing laws. You could swim or surf to a beach that is otherwise inaccessible by land (because of private property) which is a simple corollary from these truths. OSM's polygons and tagging should reflect these realities correctly. I believe that's easy to agree to strive towards as an OSM goal.

You say that a parks department (whether national, state, county or city) administered boundary, which includes some beach (but not all of it) "isn't a park." OK, what do you tag that? (That's a major problem I have with your post, is that it complains about what has been tagged, without describing how we might BETTER tag). Is it a boundary=protected_area? Perhaps with superimposed beach? (As recently happened with Capitola Beach, way/35343873 by the — your? – gooney account) Somebody added that beach, but didn't have the courage to delete the natural=beach tag from the existing official "protected area database" multipolygon, relation 7062591, also named Capitola Beach. I'm interested in better solving these issues with more clarity, not edit wars, poor tagging causing confusing superimposed data/tagging and rancor. But this does start with good dialog (sans rock-throwing, inflammatory tone, transparent and ineffective debate tactics and enough attitude for a lifetime), progresses to wider dialog, might better establish itself as consensus, and could eventually turn into wiki and clear/better tagging as far as the eye can see into the future.

I never said "piss off," you chose that inflammatory and vulgar slang. I never even invited you to (politely stated) "leave," "go away now" or "you are rudely dismissed" (the translation of the phrase). If you are that easily angered by legacy tagging and what to do about it, perhaps you should find another way to address what you perceive as the problem, or maybe even find a new project. (That's the closest I've gotten to saying "piss off," though I didn't use that phrase, and it's only a suggestion if you can't stay here without being rude, vulgar and inflammatory).

Mentioning the leisure=beach_resort tag is one of the only times I see Adamant1 make a positive, constructive recommendation about what to do here. Please, keep that up. Simply asserting "what is, sometimes from seven years ago, is wrong" turns into lengthy screeds like this one, producing much more heat than light. Make positive suggestions about how to better tag, especially what to do about what has become older, less-correct / now-perceived-as-incorrect tagging practices and that will get you and the project traction to get out of this mud. Don't look for a broad-brush blank check that "beaches aren't parks, it says so in this Talk page here," rather, be specific, with positive suggestions. Ask "Capitola Beach had the entire multipolygon tagged as both leisure=park AND natural=beach and that doesn't seem right, how should we fix that?" That is community, that is consensus building. Creating a stealth account and superimposing a beach polygon on top of the existing one, without making changes to the existing one (or discussion how it might be wrong or what to do about it) is wrong on so many levels (if that's what you did; somebody did).

My comment about you building consensus isn't based on "I have more, you have less, it's a measuring contest, I win." No, rather, it is based on your behavior. I build consensus with my behavior (well, I believe I try and succeed, others offer me feedback I do). You build walls ("that's all I need or care about" or try to) and autocratic "Beach is not equal to Park, The End" monolithic statements (or try to). That's the difference. Also, I have no idea what you mean by me "knee jerk responding" (these are carefully thought and typed responses) and "universal statements" (did I make any such thing?) as you offer no examples. The private beach "blocked by a locked" (you forgot the word "gate" or might have omitted "ed" from "locked") is not a private beach, it is a locked gate on a path to the beach: the beach is public because all beaches here are public. You can access this beach with a surfboard, kayak or by swimming and there isn't anything the owner of the adjacent property with the keys to the lock can do about it, including calling the sheriff or attempting a citizen's arrest, he would lose that case, as all beaches (including this one) are public.

My comments don't preclude anyone else from commenting here, as I said earlier, this is open to all who sign up for a wiki account. In fact, Mateusz has already commented that one small example from your posts is "absurd." 'Nuf said. Well, I'll also say Mateusz is very much on the right track with his constructive comments. Stevea (talk) 18:59, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

I have recently been doing some "untangling / remapping" of the sort we are talking about here, not on a park or beach, but on local (to me) Moore Creek Open Space Preserve (OSP). This was tagged (as originally entered) with leisure=nature_reserve, I believe all would agree, correctly. However, I also tagged it natural=wood, as it was "largely wooded," except I also carefully traced some landuse=meadow (there is some cattle grazing allowed) and natural=grassland polygons "over" this multipolygon to "punch out" (visually, as rendered) the non-wooded areas. (This isn't strictly tagging for the renderer, as it is accurate, though I realized at the time it was incorrect to include the grasslands as inner members, as that would logically exclude them from the OSP). While mapnik (then) / Carto (now) rendered this in a pleasing way (lighter green grassy areas over darker green wooded areas), recent Carto updates (the "little trees" icon of Carto on natural=wood) have shown me the error of my ways years ago: because I tagged the entire OSP multipolygon with natural=wood, now the grassy areas have "little trees" in them, clearly incorrect. Though it took me the better part of an hour, I spent some time "untangling / remapping" to what I now believe is correct tagging, primarily removing the natural=wood tag from the OSP MP. But blending the wood/grassland/scrub polygons into relatively complex shared-edge polygons, though while a bit complicated, meant a lot of the work was already done for me, I merely needed to break apart the polygons, share edges, draw some new ones and correct a bit of wood to scrub.

I say all of this not to boast at my work or fish for complements, but to demonstrate that existing tagging isn't as glibly dismissed as "wholly wrong," or "tagging for the renderer," or even "stacking tags on a single (multi)polygon when we clearly shouldn't do that" (said a relative newcomer to OSM named Adamant1 without the benefit or experience of my decade of hindsight). Rather, these complexities (what now look like errors, and really can benefit from "today's better, more clearly-defined tagging") can and do stem from many issues I've discussed here: unclear / ambiguous wiki documentation, newly re-coded renderer behavior, drifting tastes among contributors and the sheer passage of time as all of these occur. I honestly believe (and demonstrate with this example) that I, as well as other conscientious OSM contributors (especially longer-term ones) wish to not only "better map," but "better discuss HOW we better map." We DO have legacy tagging, and charging out from the starting gate with "this tagging is wholesale WRONG!" is a less effective strategy to improve things.

I have edited hundreds of thousands of polygons over nearly a decade with all of this history and many changes in the project simultaneously going on. It took me an hour or so to fix this single example to a state where I believe others may find it harmonious with "today's tagging." I am dedicated to continuing "today's tagging" today and well into the future, but I ask others to be patient with the seriously large task of existing legacy tagging which isn't going to be finger-snap-quickly improved to what we must agree, is a consensus-based, slowly-moving, wikis-don't-always-catch-up-in-real-time environment. Please benefit from my wisdom that "things DO change in OSM," have some humility, a spirit of understanding this is a relatively mature project now — call it in its young adulthood — (with some tagging that came from its more adolescent years) and we can better erase "the pimples of our youth" with adult, patient, sane, methodical, good, BETTER practices. Including better "how" at "how we improve." Thank you. Stevea (talk) 20:37, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

I find your suggestion that I, you didn't say we but if you did the point is still relevant, need to listen more because it insinuates that I or others aren't listen and need to be told to do so. Listening is a basic skill that we should all have at this point as functional adults and its something that we need to be constantly reminded about. At this point, people who don't listen aren't going to and visa versa. There's zero reason to continue bringing it up or to even mention it in the first place. Leave the language policing to admins who's job it is to regulate that stuff if need be and focus on the facts of the argument instead.

That includes nitpicking spelling errors. If I spell something your or you're is really irrelevant to the if the logic of the argument I'm making holds or not. You can say people have little else to judge my arguments on, but I deal with plenty of people here and in real life where both me and them routinely make grammatical errors. We get along fine. So its singularly your thing. A lot of people on here are from Europe and English isn't their main language. So if your going to constantly nitpick those things you won't get very far. As far as my spelling mistakes go though, I have ADHD. I've always been a semi weak speller because of it and concentration issues, but its just something I deal with, in myself and others. I clearly have more tolerance for people with disabilities and just people in general then you do though. I don't appreciate that you continued to bring up my mistakes after we have already discussed in other more private mediums to the point that I have to out myself here as being disabled. It's a pretty low thing to do. I rather keep it to myself because I don't feel like being unfairly judged for having a disability by people that I regularly interact with here, but if that's the consequences of getting you to lay off me about it, then so be it. Id appreciate it if you don't bring it up anymore since I've already addressed it multiple times and I'm sick of repeating myself.

On your other point, things haven't been "conflated in the minds of many and to explain a lot of past tagging over the years." Most of the miss tagging of things as parks in California that shouldn't have been was due to a few state wide bad imports that were never fixed. There's no mass or even small amount of users that don't the difference between a park and a beach though. Although if there was it wouldn't matter because we don't keep bad tagging just because there's a certain amount of users that do it. So it's extremely irrelevant. As is your assertion that "people in California" would answer that a state run beach is a park, because 1. You have no evidence to back it up because you haven't asked "people in California" that 2. The actual way someone wanting to use the map to find the beach/park (which is the relevant demographic here, not "people of California) would ask "is Seabright Park around here?" of which a local to Santa Cruz would probably say "Oh, you mean the beach? Yeah its down that way." And I know it would be the answer because It's one I've actually received and been asked before. Again though, what people locally call something doesn't matter, although there is a tag for that, because its a world wide map. Otherwise, your saying when someone goes to Santa Cruz and looks for a beach on whatever OSM map they are using and gets a bunch of parks to bad. Which just doesn't work. Again also, its not how "people in California" do it anyway. I live a few hours north from there. We don't do it do that and I've never heard anyone else do it that when I travel around. Not even in Santa Cruz when I've been there. They all call them beaches. Its just your thing that your refusing to fix. It doesn't have anything to do with the black and whiteness of OSM tagging or not it, its that your wrong. That's it.

As far as the playground goes, I think it fits on a talk page if I feel like it fits on a talk page. Last I checked I can ask for elaboration on something in OSM where ever I want. So don't tell me what does or doesn't fit somewhere. If don't think a question about it fits on a page, cool, but I do. I'm not the only thinks it might fit either. So does Mateusz or else he wouldn't have opened a note about it. Again, as far as the consensus goes I'm not going against consensus by asking the question of its a playground. I haven't actually changed anything and I have the right to ask whatever I want. So don't treat me otherwise. I'm sick of your condescension toward me simply asking questions about things. It's clear you can't handle people question how you do things. I would have fine leaving a note about it to, I just didn't feel like dealing with your badgering and note closing again before anyone can comment on it.

As far as the link goes, your the one that provided it. You can say it doesn't matter now, but that's just because it didn't support what you said it did. So keep moving the bar as to what support your position or not. That's fine, but don't blame me because the link you provided doesn't show what you reported it did. As far as the "language policing" goes, it had nothing to do with "your opinion on something" it has to do with you constantly telling me to correct my tone when its inappropriate to do so and I already asked you multiple times here and other places not to do it. If your not going to show basic respect for the people your interacting with by not discussing things they already said they don't feel are worth discussing for clearly legitimate reasons, I'm not going to worry about calling what your doing "language policing." Either way, it's still off topic to. Which if your right etc about this you'd think would matter. Otherwise why flood the messages with a bunch of side tangents about the usage of Your versus You're that are just going to make it harder for people to read the thread?

You actually told me to piss off multiple times when you closed notes I opened repeatedly simply because you didn't like them and refused to discuss things. So its cool if your acting civil here now that other people are watching, which you really aren't, but you haven't been. I'm taking this conversation as a whole to your general behavior and not in isolation.

I won't respond to your other paragraph's because they are the same long winded faux "I'm just trying to be civil and get consensus" stuff that mainly serves the purpose of taking underhanded jabs at me that you continue to do. So I'm just going to it. Along with your paranoid side thing about me maybe creating a shill account to change a park. Which is complete B.S. to even bring up.

As I said originally, I already know your opinion on this, I'd like to get the opinion of other people. That's why I opened the thread in the first place. It's pretty disrespectful to continue taking jabs at me and going off side things, like accusing me of creating a shill account, that you can just private message me about. I'd appreciate it if you practiced what you preach and gave other people a chance to comment now that everyone knows your opinion pretty clearly. 99% of the things you've said aren't issues and just "problems" you've made up anyway, like that tagging isn't set in stone when know one has said otherwise or the whole thing about how people should listen more when everyone is listening or your constant going on about consensus when know one said they were going against consensus. I'd also remind you that we are all volunteer's here and have little time to read through long diatribes about things that aren't relevant to the discussion. Including myself. Since most of your messages are just a massive waste of time and of topic mental projection, that has little relevance to anything id appreciate it if you saved it now. We all get it, tone, consensus, things aren't set in stone, blah blah blah blah. I'd like to hear other people's opinions now and not have the conversation drowned out by other none sense. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:30, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Adamant1 says "Listening is a basic skill that we should all have at this point as functional adults". Well, "should," yes, but many don't, even in OSM. He continues "and its something that we need to be constantly reminded about." I wouldn't say constantly, however when those who don't don't, maybe frequently is enough. He continues "At this point, people who don't listen aren't going to and visa versa." We agree to disagree. I have helped children and adults develop listening skills, and "the bottom line," team relationships, families even entire lives have improved as a result. I choose not to treat people as basket cases of "oh, well, looks like we have a non-listener here."

As a linguistics major and multilingual in five languages, I am keenly aware how not everybody's language skills are always 100%, especially my own. Therefore I am sensitive to this, especially as I know and interact with family and friends who are on the autistic spectrum, where I have always striven to be a compassionate listener. Also, I strive to write well, as this is a written medium. As others don't, I usually say nothing, especially as English may be their non-native language (my mother has been an English as a Second Language teacher for 45 years — English was not the first language of either of my parents — we frequently talk about her work and I have known and spoken with many of her students personally). I have often thanked people for their fine English skills as I recognize the dedication they took to speak/write it. However, when writing approaches or crosses the threshold of being unintelligible from grammatical/spelling ambiguities or elided words, I might say something (and have, did, do and will). I apologize for what clearly seems insensitivity to your ADHD, I assure you it is not my intention to be insensitive to anybody's disability. (In a sense, we all have disabilities while we all have aptitudes, these differ in everybody).

I don't have a Gallup-quality poll of having asked the question mentioned, but as I have hiked, mapped and discussed with many over the years, I have "taken many a temperature" (dozens, maybe hundreds of Californians) about this, so, yes, I can and do personally refute the validity of your 1. Funny you mention "Seabright Park," as there is no such place, AND I was just fixing Seabright Beach, which got broken and I fixed with a 2-node way connecting to Twin Lakes State Beach (of which Seabright Beach is a part, correctly denoted natural=beach and using shared polygon edges to do so). Starting down the path of a discussion or proof with a false assumption like defining "Seabright Park" when it doesn't exist allows one to prove literally ANYthing true, so I won't rise to that bait. (It's a logical fallacy to try, so I don't). Neither is true your 2. If somebody asked me the way to "Seabright Park" I would say the same thing: "There is no such place. You might be asking about Seabright Beach, which is part of Twin Lakes State Park, but that park has three beaches, one of them named Seabright. There are other parks IN Seabright, which is both a suburb of Santa Cruz, and there are two neighborhoods in it, called Upper Seabright and Lower Seabright, so maybe you mean Tyrell Park, Ocean View Park, Frederick Street Park, Star of the Sea Park, San Lorenzo Park or Araña Gulch Park, all of which are in or right next to the Santa Cruz suburb of Seabright, among others." And not only could I do that off the top of my head because of my local knowledge, I could point them to OSM and RIGHT NOW, it would tell them exactly and all of the same things. (A good goal to shoot for, by way of example). So now it is my turn to suggest to you that you not suggest to me that not only are you wrong about me not having asked people, but you are wrong about "the actual way someone want(s) to use the map to find the beach/park." Why? Because guessing about map consumers, who they are and what questions they are asking is something you can never perfectly predict. We tag data accurately, period. For exactly this reason: we truly don't know how the data will be used, so they must all be as truthful and accurate as possible. Well, to the best of our abilities at the time we enter/edit them, allowing that future changes (to the real world), updates (both to imported data and the real world) and improvements (because wiki, renderers and/or many different "something else things") can, do, should and will happen. If I had a dollar for every time OSM "changed the rules under my feet" I'd be much better off. But that's OK, instead I "roll with the punches," and suck it up gratefully. This project improves mightily, and the costs as it does so are well worth it. Does this mean we have some (stinky at times) legacy data? Yes, though perhaps now you better understand why. Have you experienced this for a decade? Hardly.

I assumed the elided verb phrase from your "users that don't the difference between a park and a beach though" you meant "don't know the difference." (I'm sensitive to your writing, yet leaving out a verb is really important enough to mention, lest I be accused of putting words in your mouth). OK, except, we haven't yet established users DO know the difference: that's the point of this discussion. So to follow the difficult logic of your subsequent conclusion is simply a waste of my reading time. We (this section on this Talk page) haven't yet concluded that, yet again, you simply wish to assume we have and draw conclusions. We can't/shouldn't (yet) do that, it's putting the cart before the horse.

Far be it from me to suggest a proper forum for a discussion, we have many: wiki:Talk pages, talk-us or talk-tagging pages, forum.osm.org, help.osm.org, the next Mapping Party or other more-social gathering of other OSM contributors, and on and on. I'm happy to accept any of them and do my best to keep up (though nobody can successfully read everything/all discussions everywhere, especially as proprietary "secret sauce walkie-talkie" channels like Slack don't belong in an open-data project, in my opinion). I am even careful to deign to another's preference of discussion channel: some prefer talk-lists, some like wiki Discussion, some like private missive, other see changeset comments as appropriate. As some are more private and others more public, they all have their place, I am careful to select for correctness and honor other's preferences.

I never said or implied it's "to (too) bad" that one who in Santa Cruz "looks for a beach on whatever OSM map they are using and gets a bunch of parks." On the contrary, my example above about what you might both search for AND find (regarding beaches and parks in Santa Cruz), RIGHT NOW IN OSM is precisely correct. If it isn't, I'd like to hear why. If you find an example and my answer is or leans toward "legacy tagging," well, it is 100% likely we can agree upon satisfactory tagging on every single one of them. But that's not what I hear from you. You seem to want people to agree or disagree with a question in a stripped, monolithic state. Unlike Mateusz did, he provided rather succinct opinions and excellent examples as links; thank you Mateusz for injecting clarity into "the demanding monolithic-question-phrasing mapper vs. the long-winded historical-perspective nit-picking-linguist technical-tweaking detail-oriented mapper." You "shoved first," Adamant1, I'm trying hard not to shove back. However, there are things to say to your question, as well as how you asked it and have replied so far.

I'm not "refusing to fix" and I still don't understand what you are calling "my thing." Really, I don't. I've offered two example fixes (one slightly relevant, one exactly relevant, I believe) that I've done in the last 24 hours, right here in this thread. While I better understand that you feel attacked, I don't believe I am attacking you (nor do others, I'm hearing), though it does seem that your reaction to you feeling attacked (whether you are or aren't) is to "attack back." I remain on the high road as I defend myself even as I reiterate here that I have no intention of lazily leaving seven, eight, nine, two year old edits of mine, which I am likely to agree could use "today's tagging" updates UN-updated. Not at all. Understand they happened, for perfectly valid reasons, they are long in the tooth, and yet there are thousands of them (millions when you include those by quite-well-meaning others, maybe billions if you count all of OSM). Throwing a tantrum or demanding answers to monolithic, over-simplified questions isn't the best way forward.

"Your (you're) wrong" is one of the most ineffective, inflammatory things you can say to someone, whether oral or written, especially when it isn't rather painstakingly proven to be true. Fail, buddy. Sorry if that's harsh, but there it is. I go out of my way to avoid this phrase (yet do at least twice in this reply), you seem to delight in it. I'm not even sure what you are saying I'm wrong about. That because you've been to Santa Cruz and "they all just call them beaches?" We've established that a state Park (Twin Lakes) has THREE beaches, all named differently! That's not only a non-trivial thing to tag in OSM (over ten or fifteen years, multiple imports/datasets/improvements-and-updates over the years, as well as serious local knowledge) but we do (and have done) a pretty good job of documenting (tagging data in OSM) exactly that. What's the problem? (At least at Twin Lakes and its beaches). What am I wrong about there?

"It's clear (I) can't handle people question how (I) do things." This is so false it might rise to the level of slander. I bend over backwards to listen, improve and am the first to say "I made a mistake, let's (you or I) correct it." It's not a problem, though sometimes it isn't easy for everybody to see eye-to-eye what the solution might be or eventually is/becomes. Most of the time (maybe even always or nearly always) there is a solution, we find it, I embrace it. This has happened many, many times in this project (my proof self-documents) and I am offended (at the very least) you would say otherwise. Not once (in this thread, elsewhere) can you offer "I can't handle people question(ing) how (I) do things." This isn't simply inflammatory, it is injurious to my reputation with its falsity. Please, sir: don't do that again.

I'm not taking jabs at you (it may feel that way to you, that's on you), rather, I am asking you to support your lines of reasoning and arguments with effective elocution. That's simply what is expected here. If you can't stand the heat, I do NOT and never HAVE said to you "piss off." I challenge you to find anything from me to you (a changeset comment, a Talk page, a thread, ANYthing) where I did, because I didn't. The phrase "Piss off" is not in my vocabulary, you using these words is clearly your interpretation of something I said or did, not anything I actually said. Be careful as you might slander people, it's a dangerous tactic. Please, sir: don't do that again.

Others, please do chime in here. Mr. Ant and I seem to be causing way too much heat. Example posts like that of Mateiusz' which offer positive examples, good links and positivity would be most welcome now. Stevea (talk) 01:28, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Some clarifications, history and a way forward. The original question was followed by "other users think beaches can be parks. I'm not sure if they think all beaches are parks or just "their" beaches..."

I believe Adamant1 believes I (stevea) am one of those "other users." I'm not sure if he believes this because I have "supported" and "continued to tag" parks (especially state parks) with beaches (around here, Santa Cruz County, California USA), but that seems likely. (I could be wrong, as could he be wrong, as his assumption is preceded by "I'm not sure." So we are dealing with an "I'm not sure" by Adamant1 and an "I'm not sure" by stevea, perhaps the root of so much contention here). If it is true that Adamant1 believes I am a user who thinks "beaches can be parks," here is what I say to explain and hopefully clarify: what I was doing was "preserving" the tagging of "(state) parks with beaches" from Apo42's 2009 import of state parks, some of which were state beaches. These data improved with newer versions over the years, the tagging (leisure=park, park_type=state_park or state_beach, name=Twin Lakes State Beach...) seemed correct (at the time), as nobody had any contentions about these tags, life went merrily on. Yes, I (stevea) was one of the people who "improved" these "park" data (updating data, properly combining multipolygon elements, using shared ways as a newer, more efficient method to express the data structures that define parks and beaches) and even changing leisure=park to boundary=national_park on what I call a state park (as it is run by State Parks) but is actually called "State Beach." Doing so should NOT imply that I "equate beaches and parks" as I don't do that, but apparently it didn't prevent this assumption in the mind of Adamant1, though I'm not sure. I might CALL a State Beach a State Park "in the vernacular" but in OSM, and NOW, I believe these should be tagged with their name (whether state beach or state park, whatever it is) the boundary=national_park tag (because it is a STATE park or beach, run by a California department) and the beaches should be separate polygons (whether with shared edges, as multi- or not) tagged natural=beach. However, these were not originally entered with all of this "today's tagging," they entered (in 2009) as "parks," all of them (I believe, though there may be other parks entered into OSM which "inherited the tagging style" from this import which it is entirely possible remain with poor tagging that deserves improvement).

Meanwhile in OSM (over most of a decade, a fairly long time), a number of developments took place: 1), there was a re-definition of distinctions between landuse=forest and natural=wood and a further (more recent) development in Carto that no longer distinguishes these as rendering differently. This did affect parks around here and how they render(ed) and I believe there were some tagging changes (improvements, really) to accommodate a better understanding of the semantics of these. 2), the distinctions between landUSE and landCOVER (mostly expressed with natural= tags, not landcover= tags) became not only identified as "quite confused by many in OSM," but seemed to get worse / more confused by more contributors over the years. We are still there (largely confused about this distinction, it slowly gets better), only now we bring the complexities of parks into it as a mixture, which adds "not well defined" to "not well defined." 3), the distinctions between leisure=park and boundary=national_park also continued to "smear," until relatively recently, as the leisure=park page now much better distinguishes when to tag one vs. the other. 4), extant tagging, which was both on landuse polygons as well as park polygons, some of which assumed that people could make a generalization about what sort of landCOVER (or natural= key) was discussed (on talk-us pages and elsewhere) and began to improve such that assumptions that, for example a National Forest could not be assumed to be "all trees" were better clarified. This further helped clarify how to better tag in many people's minds (especially readers of talk-us), but it didn't necessarily "fix" (better tag, better update) existing tags on national forests, national parks and other parks, like state parks and county parks. These "better tagged updates" were hit-or-miss, and some of the remnants from earlier parks, what I call "legacy tagging" which has not benefitted from all of these developments NOR "better tagging" ever happened. This led to some believing that the older, more-or-less "wrong now" (but not necessarily as it was entered) was believed to be correct tagging, as it wasn't corrected. This isn't true, it is more that "nobody has gotten around to re-tagging/better tagging each and every 'legacy' park which could benefit from improved tagging." There are 5) and 6) and perhaps even others, but they are distractions at this point.

I hope what results from this is not a monolithic "no, beaches are not parks," which on its face, is true, but it is the right answer to the wrong question. The right question is "how should we tag parks with beaches?" (Knowing there is a lot of legacy tagging, including California state parks which are state beaches — that's my way of saying what I believe is correct, some might disagree and say "call it a state beach, not a state park.") I believe part of GETTING TO a correct answer would be to: Step 1, use an exemplary park-with-beaches (or something like it that we better name) to point to as "we agree this is correct" and Step 2, let those who wish to correct "now wrong" parks with beaches (or maybe simply beaches run by parks departments?) so they also emulate the tagging from Step 1 that we "agree is correct."

I believe Twin Lakes State Beach (relation/7087720, I call it a state park, at least it is RUN BY the California Department of Parks and Recreation), with three beaches as included outer member polygons, can serve as a "placeholder, maybe correct" example with which we might do this. It is far easier to work with a concrete example and say "this seems correct to me" and "that doesn't look right" or "here is an element that doesn't meet our wiki definition" or whatever than it is to have these abstract, long-winded, go-nowhere screeds.

Adamant1, please take a look at TLSB and see if you find anything disagreeable. If so, let's hear a good reason why it might need changing. And as an added bonus, even though it is called a State Beach, might you allow that there are plenty of locals who call it a "state park"? Because we do, even if it makes you hopping mad as wrong. We don't have to call it park in OSM, in fact, OSM now doesn't and OSM hasn't since it entered as leisure=park then became boundary=national_park on the relation, though the Schwan's Lagoon polygon is tagged leisure=park and I've added loc_name=Twin Lakes State Park to it. But you can see how (including with a blurry leisure=park definition) we locals might do that, as it is run by the State Parks, and the rest are beaches, this is more park like. That's not really giving up so much, now, is it?) I'm not sure how Simpkins Swim Center ties in, it's sometimes (also) a county/community meeting space (rail trail maps, input-from-the-public kind of activity). There are some nearby City parks also named Twin Lakes. It's a complex park (park complex?) with multiple jurisdictions including a small federal patch (named "Twin Lakes - USA") on the edge of the harbor. With respect and actually trying to resolve this, Stevea (talk) 20:30, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Yet more clarification: there is a relation (5779560) of two nearly parallel ways which are simply tagged natural=beach. This represents an over 14-mile (22.7 km) long segment of beach, from Capitola to Moss Landing (central to southern Santa Cruz County and into Monterey County). This beach was not added by me and was added the year before Adamant1 joined OSM. It is fairly accurately "traced" (apparently from visual imagery) and has had no reason to be disturbed for over three years. However, what I'll say now (though I'm not sure Adamant1 realizes) is that Carto renders leisure=park ON TOP OF any natural=beach (multi)polygon. So, any "state beaches" (run by State Parks) which entered OSM as "state parks," quite literally "cover up" accurately-tagged beaches. I'm not sure this will "solve" whatever he believes the problem to be (an answer to "is a beach a park?" won't solve much), but it does go some distance to explaining what we see rendered in Carto.

Yet more confusion: New Brighton State Beach (relation/7101670) is tagged as a leisure=park (as it has woods, camping that isn't on the beach per se, parking and other amenities...), yet Seacliff State Beach (relation/7108495) a similar facility and right nearby isn't tagged "anything" (with leisure or natural tags). As I do agree it is more accurate to not "stack" natural tags, I'll agree that "more clarification how to tag" would be good here. Nobody has answered what the "most relevant" tag on such state beaches, county parks... like these should be: is it boundary=protected_area or leisure=nature_reserve? I lean in the direction of "no" for those tags, as they (especially the former, the latter wobbles a bit as it allows recreation) "protect the area" as their paramount idea.

We clearly have inconsistent tagging around here (and many other places) regarding beaches and parks. I don't believe this is deliberately sloppy on anybody's part, it isn't because of insistence that a beach is a park, and I've explained some of the history and reasons as well as some of how we've gotten better. But I have yet to hear anybody say definitively how, for example, these three parks should all be perfectly tagged:

1) Twin Lakes State Beach (with its Schwan's Lagoon polygon very much park-like or nature_reserve-like),

2) New Brighton State Beach (with its camping area not directly ON the beach which is also park-like if you consider campgrounds are often in parks, yet this one is in a place called "state beach" yet you don't camp ON the beach), not to mention Potbelly Beach which renders correctly as a sliver of the 14-mile beach multipolygon noted above "peeks through" a gap in New Brighton and

3) Seacliff State Beach, which has a separately named beach — Rio Del Mar State Beach — as part of it, south of Aptos Creek.

These are challenging! We've done well to get "here, now," yet it's clear there remains confusion. I would appreciate hearing others make positive suggestions on how to better or best tag on at least the three parks/beaches I identify. As I've said, I believe using concrete examples is better than monolithic wrong-questions. Maybe these specific examples can better allow us to tease apart what semantics we mean with the specific syntax of certain tags. Stevea (talk) 22:27, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

First, know where in my original question was I specific about who was doing the tagging and I intentionally kept you out of it because I didn't want the question to turn into the melee that it has. Also, I think tagging questions like this can be asked more generally without there being a specific incident behind them. Outside of our discussion, I am just generally interested in what qualifies as a park or not, because it's an on going issue in California that has led many arguments, hateful messages including threats of retaliation for innocent edits, and unnecessary edit wars. It only became about you because you decided to interject yourself into the question and make it just about Santa Cruz when there was zero reason to. You could have just as easily said "Yes, I do think beaches can be tagged as parks" and got on with your life. This is an issue that needs to be dealt with if you were the main perpetrator of it or not though, but looking at tag usage of leisure=park + natural=beach there's currently about 70 uses, most of which are from you. So it is your issue as much as anyone else's.

As far as if your defending it or not, your the one repeatedly saying why currently tag things that way, as if in defense of it. Even if you say it's not defense, but it seems like one because what your saying isn't based in any facts and has a defense tone to it, including the fact that you kept closing notes that I opened related to this defensively. And again, your the one doing the edits to the parks and adding the tags. You might say "in many people's minds, a "state park" that is a "state beach" gets blended together as a single semantic (being descriptive)", but what you really mean is that its something you do. You just claim it's "all California's" to distance yourself from the responsibility. Which is fine. It wouldn't work if everything was personal, but it also doesn't work if you depersonalize things that your doing and do it in a way that speaks for large groups of people you know nothing about. Ultimately, I don't know if "all Californian's" think beaches are parks or not, I know in my own experience they don't, but it's irrelevant anyway because 1. There's no way to prove it 2. Tagging of major items in OSM isn't based on "Californian's ideas" 3. There's real problems with the current tagging that need to be resolved whatever Californian's" think.

As far as the issue's go, there's no benefit that I can see to tagging beaches as both parks and beaches (or just as parks) that I can see, and there's lots of disadvantages, like the whole thing about not being able to beaches when you do a search for them because they are all tagged wrongly as parks. Plus, like you say dual tagging doesn't really work and we need to choose one. The one that makes sense in most cases is natural=beach. We can sit here and argue all day about the linguistic nuances of what a park is, but we all know what qualifies as a beach. It's a 100% better tag to sue because it describes a natural feature instead of a human invented land-use classification (or in the leisure tag parlance if the place involves "leisure activities" whatever that means. Which is much more subjective in my opinion. As a side note, notice it's a leisure tag. Not a land use tag. Which is another reason your whole "parks department whatever" usage doesn't hold up).

Ultimately, tagging these things as parks and using the park:type=state_beach is a just a hack/work around that's used as an excuse to tag things as park that probably shouldn't be tagged that way. There's already boundary=protected_area + protection_class=5 for state parks. "state parks" aren't a universal term either. Let alone one even used that much outside of California in tagging. Tags should be based on universally recognized ideas. "state" whatever is a mainly American idea. Whereas "protected area" is pretty universal. Often times tagging things with leisure=park comes at the cost of not tagging them as protected areas. Most state parks are evidence of that. People routinely remove the protect area tag or just don't add it in the first place because they don't like how it renders and because leisure=park is supported in Pokemon Go. Whereas, protected areas aren't. There's currently around 600 "state" things tagged this way. If we don't come to an agreement of tagging that's based on more universal tagging practices we risk turning California into a map silo where we might get to tag things how we want them, but it comes at the cost of a usable map for everyone else. Including people who live here.

So I think beaches that are beaches should be tagged as beaches. If some beaches are in actual parks then the wider park area should be mapped and then the smaller beach area mapped inside of it. Things should only tagged as leisure=park if they are actually called that in name or if there is clear source by the city that lists it as a park. Not just "well this beach is managed by the parks department and its listed on a website of their assets so I think it's a park...And "California's"?." In cases of state parks, they should be tagged as boundary=protected_area + protection_class=5 (or whatever it is). Then the beach's should be mapped inside of them. There shouldn't be any double tagging or multiple mapping of the same object with different tags though. It screws up searches, makes the map look bad, and is just pointless. The same goes for state parks. I have some examples but I'll save them for another time.

P.S. I wrote this while you were writing your last message. So I don't have a response to it. I'll respond later though, but I will say that I'm aware of the issue with park multiplygon's rendering over other things and I think the over use of multiplygons in California when they are completely unnecessary is something that needs to be dealt with, but its out of the range of discussion here. Although it would probably help this to deal with it at some point. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:54, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

"(Nowhere) in my original question was I specific about who was doing the tagging and I intentionally kept you out of it because I didn't want the question to turn into (this) melee..." Adamant1, it doesn't matter. I never accused you of pointing a finger at me, yet it is clear to me (whether actually true or not, you can make this a he-said/he-said if you like, but it seems a dead-end) and likely others that you lit the spark of this friction. The bottom line is that we continue to have a (lengthy) discussion about it, which feels like it has gotten a notch or two more civil, and for that I am grateful. "I think tagging questions like this can be asked more generally without there being a specific incident behind them." Please benefit from my decade in OSM and decades of dispute resolution, consensus building, software team leadership and presentations I have given on widespread agreement in shared project dataspaces: I believe you are mistaken about this. I say this as gently and politely as I can, yet it is true. A major reason the thorny, chewy tangle about parks has taken 15 years to make minimal/mild/moderate progress is that "OSM bites off way too much to chew." One, two, three datasets at a time, those are problems we can wrap our head around and "work our way from simple to general." Going the other way is simply asking for trouble, or the other result (as seems nearly 100% evidenced here, except for Mateusz' contributions) is that nobody is willing to "bite off" that much and chew with you.

I am not a "perpetrator," or if you think I am or wish to call me out as one, please say why. You say I've tagged about 70 times leisure=park + natural=beach together, that's not a crime, nor am I a perpetrator. I've stated the reasons for why that tagging evolved the way it did (so there's no reason for me to do that again, and you'd likely say I was "defending myself" as I did). Clearly, we are both interested in "better tagging forward." I believe the whole of OSM is. Yet, I also believe (from a near-lifetime of experience) that starting small and working up to the larger general case is what is eventually going to win the day. I'm not "interjecting" myself if, as you state, I'm someone who has tagged this way and makes a clear statement that, like you, I wish to know how to tag "better." Please don't indict me for the non-crime of "tagging accurately as we best know how today" (when it was 2009-11 when much of this tagging happened or was improved). Yes, you can point to examples from 2012-2018 (or even 2019) yet, it was April 2019 (NOW) that the definition of leisure=park sharpened up as it has. What we do with beaches and parks together is fallout from that little bomb, and that doesn't scare me, nor do I feel the slightest bit of guilt that I have done something wrong, as much as you seem to wish to paint me with that brush.

No, it isn't only me who believes "a 'state park' that is a 'state beach' gets blended together as a single semantic," as there are MANY who do so. As I said, I didn't take a Gallup Poll, but I'm absolutely not alone, and if you wrote a letter to the California Department of Parks and Recreation (CDPR) and asked them for clarification, well, you'd best sharpen up your writing skills. Ultimately, we (Californians) have hired CDPR to "speak for us" (the People) what we mean by having state parks, and how to classify them, and what to call them. THEN, there is what we do in OSM, which really does try to hew to reality, and reality is grounded in "what people say, do, think and put on signs." I am not distancing myself by saying that, it is a fact, no, stronger still — it is a truth — in this world. Your statement "There's real problems with the current tagging that need to be resolved whatever (Californians) think" is arrogance at its finest. No, Mr. Ant, OSM needs to reflect what Californians say about our parks. Not despite it or "whatever" about it. Whew. How long have you been in OSM again?

Your oversimplification of "dual tagging" (it's WAY more subtle and nuanced than that, as we agree "stacking" natural on parks/nature_preserves/protected_areas isn't usually correct) and "they are all tagged wrongly as parks" is simply taking a club and beating to death something which is much more complex than you trying to shoehorn it into a "this or that, The End" black-or-white choice. I'll say it again, plenty of people say about Twin Lakes State Beach that the 3 beaches are beaches yet the "Schwan's Lagoon" polygon is MUCH more park-like, or perhaps more leisure=nature_reserve even as it is part of something called "state beach." What would YOU do there? How would YOU tag that? Please don't say you'd like to know the answers to how to do this in general, that's much too large a problem to solve between us (or others) here and now. Please say how we should tag TLSB, Seacliff State Beach and New Brighton State Beach. Then we can have a conversation based on readily-digestible-sized ideas and dialog.

Calling something "just a hack/work around that's used as an excuse" shows you still haven't digested the history of how this tagging happened over the last decade. Take a deep breath, please, do that, then answer the question above.

I agree with you that "tags should be based on universally recognized ideas." That's a good place for us to continue. However, once you recognize that "universality" has yet to be achieved (we try here, we might even make progress!) isn't easy to achieve, and yet we strive to achieve. But, please, don't assume we HAVE achieved it, because we haven't.

"'state' whatever is a mainly American idea." Baloney, Adamant1. Well, the US has our particular constitution and its Tenth Amendment that gives US states a lot of power, and the 50 states are undeniably sovereign, yet, there are plenty of "states" around the world. Germany, Australia, Brazil and India have them, these are big, populous countries, it's not a unique concept, and this list is by no means exhaustive. So the air out of that balloon has just been deflated.

You say "'protected area' is pretty universal." Maybe you think so since you arrived on the block. But as many of us have been around it many times since you got here, we know this is a recent tag, only now getting better established, and there is plenty of "legacy tagging" to go around that doesn't fit your "today's tagging" way of looking at things. Do you understand this yet? We are still hashing this out, to wit, here and now.

If you want to go around and re-tagging what came from decade-old imports as leisure=park and "better" tag them as boundary=protected_area — and I'm not saying that is right or wrong, you are — be my guest. But you better establish via consensus that is the right thing to do first, and I'm not sure you've done that. And you know what, I'm just going to come right out and say it: screw Pokemon Go. You seem to have a particular ire about this, and while I'm not happy to see bogus parks created just so some kid can play a video game by mangling OSM data, nor do you get the right to wholesale redefine what OSM has struggled to evolve for 15 years because you (as a relative newcomer) want to autocratically redefine parks in your own image. You seriously lack sensitivity to the consensus process, the leisure=park tag itself (and its rich, storied, complex, tangled history) and see yourself as some sort of crusader to "once and for all define PARK as NOT BEACH." It simply isn't that simple. Sure, I think we agree that there are very good simplifications we can agree upon so we better tag in the present and in the future. So, OK, go figure out what tags you'd like to see on the 3 parks I mention, posit something smart here, and we'll go from there. You DO get closer when/as you say "beaches that are beaches should be tagged as beaches." I agree. Let's use a natural=beach on polygons which accurately describe sandy (maybe rocky), waves-lapping-upon beaches. You've got no argument from me there. But don't get autocratic and think you can rip apart 10 or 15 years of mapping and 70 or 600 beaches/parks with "this is how it IS" and believe you are right. I doubt you are, so chew on three and let's see what others think of your results. Stevea (talk) 02:22, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Yikes. So much for things becoming more civil. You asked me how I would tag things and I told you. In know way is that "autocratic" or am I saying "this is how it is" by saying how I think things should be tagged. Again, I haven't tagged anything with anything. Your the only that's touched any of the things being discussed here. I'm not going to participate in this one sided badgering. If you want to accuse me of being autocratic or throw out other useless accusations, I'll just conclude that your completely unreasonable, that this is a waste of time, and I will just go about re-tagging things how I feel like. Then we can get an admin to deal with it if need be. I'm perfectly fine with that. I'm not going to continue putting time into figuring this out with your unreasonable attitude though. I have zero tolerance for it. Especially your accusation that I'm some how arrogant simply for having opinions about things. There's nothing that pisses me off more then people then who act the way you just did.

I'll respond to the actual, useful content of your message later, but know that I have little time or energy to deal with your attitude. So if you actually want this to be resolved, without it potentially going really badly, don't call me arrogant or anything else related to it again. As I said before, I don't care what your opinion of my behavior is and it doesn't have crap to do with resolving this. So either keep your mouth shout about it or complain to an admin if it's actually an issue. I'm perfectly willing to discuss it with from DWG if need be, but I'm not going to just sit here and be insulted by you repeatedly for know reason. It's not going to get us anywhere, except places I'm 100% sure you don't want this to go. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:33, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

I welcome the DWG, as I haven't done anything wrong, nor am I frightened by empty threats. Bring them into this and have them read your scorching prose and my genuine attempts at reason, civility and forward motion. Please, I invite you to do so. Although, I believe they have more important things to do. P.S.: asking for somebody to better tag, one, two or three "somethings" that you might have a disagreement about and which confound even me, their part author, as to what "today's tagging should best be" is NOT badgering. This is especially true as I've only done so exactly enough times to see that you repeatedly don't do it by repeating myself (once) to ask you for that contribution as a token gesture forward (rather than undeserved vituperation). I continue to believe working on one, two or three bite-sized issues can move this forward. Anybody else? It seems Adamant1 is true to his name: "a•dam•ant: refusing to be persuaded or to change one's mind." Stevea (talk) 06:26, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

"Anybody else?" - if you are interested in wider participation then tagging mailing list, or talk-us mailing list or https://osmus.slack.com/ may be a good place. OSM Wiki discussion pages very rarely have discussions with multiple participants and in this case length of what was already posted may be a bit discouraging. I would recommend to post to tagging mailing list starting from summary of what was already discussed (obviously, only on-topic parts). Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 14:50, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Mateusz. I'll keep the Discussion here for now, as this feels mainly between Adamant1 and his problems with my tagging I chose to inherit through legacy maintenance, ambiguous wiki and rules-changing/renderer-changing (not that I mind, but it can be challenging), though I do welcome others to chime in here (as does he). That's what I meant by "anybody else?" Taking this to the tagging list or Slack (as I've mentioned, I strongly believe a proprietary comm method like Slack clashes with an open-data project like OSM) seems it would needlessly spread a rancorous brush fire to a larger community. Adamant1's poor choice of "leading/loaded question" (the oversimplified and monolithic section title) looks to be a botched attempt at gaining tacit permission to shackle us into a prohibition of blending parks and beaches, largely because he appears less-aware of tagging histories, is unable to engage in constructive discussion (or only with great difficulty), or both, I'm not sure. But, while poorly-crafted, leading questions are usually easy targets to rein in, this time (due to the questioner's high-friction antagonistic, easily angered stance) it took a dozen exchanges and thousands of words to get him to state how he believes state parks with beaches / state beaches should be tagged. Then, he doesn't (won't?) address the common approach of using one to three examples for discussion purposes as he delays offering potentially instructive examples of his own ("but I'll save them for another time"). Shrug. I usually see this as "trolling behavior," but I have held my tongue using that moniker until now. I believe it is obvious to most or all who read this thread. Adamant1, I continue to offer you the opportunity to engage in constructive discussion, if you are able to do so. I, too, would like to know how to (now) better tag "parks with beaches," I have offered any number of opportunities and examples to do that, but I'm exhausted with this thread and the truly difficult communication style of the other major participant. Stevea (talk) 17:32, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

"have them read your scorching prose and my genuine attempts at reason, civility and forward motion." There's nothing civil about calling someone an arrogant aristocrat or using every other sentence to personally attack someone. There's also nothing forward moving in going off on multiple rants about the spelling of your versus you're or continually repeating things about history and consensus when they don't have jack to do with anything (btw, I'm perfectly aware of the history of park tagging in California. I spent plenty of time researching it. I don't need to be lectured about it either). Your either blind to your own massively disingenuous behavior here and everywhere else that we've communicated or just purposely obfuscating it because you know its wrong. My guess is the later. On the other hand, I've repeatedly said to leave personal attacks out of it and to stay on subject. Which is exactly what I've done and is the exact opposite of what your doing. Including in the same message where your claiming its not what your doing. In fact, you haven't even taken a stance on anything here. Every single message you've written has just been either personal attacks or side tangents. You've contributed absolutely nothing useful to the discussion or the question.

"I strongly believe a proprietary comm method like Slack clashes with an open-data project like OSM) seems it would needlessly spread a rancorous brush fire to a larger community." Of course you wouldn't want it going to the larger community where more people will disagree with you. Personally, I don't care. I'm 100% fine with it going to the mailing list, but if its going to you should be the one to do it. Since your the one that's taking issue with mine and Mateusz Konieczny's answers. Btw, Mateusz Konieczny has as much time at this as you do if not more and he was perfectly able to answer the original question without specific examples or anything else that your claiming is necessary and even though it was supposedly a ""leading/loaded question." I'm sure you'll some other good excuse as to why his opinion doesn't matter though or your just ignore it outright like you've done with every other thing that contradicts your narrative.

"he doesn't (won't?) address the common approach of using one to three examples for discussion purposes as he delays offering potentially instructive examples of his own ("but I'll save them for another time"). Shrug. I usually see this as "trolling behavior,"" Or I just have a life outside of arguing with people like you about things and was going to address it later. I just haven't had time to look into the examples you provided and I have little urge to when taken with the badgering etc. It obviously pisses you off when people don't do things immediately, when you tell them to though. Also, I don't really care if you call me a troll. I'm not self obsessed about my image like other people here seem to be. I only took issue with you calling me arrogant because it is response to asking a question. I'm not an authoritarian and I value free speech. So I don't criticize people simply for asking questions. That could just be me though. Your free to criticize people for having opinions on things or asking questions though if you want, but my dislike of the insult had nothing to do with my ego and I don't really care what you call me outside of that. Your examples probably aren't relevant anyway though. Since you clearly don't know what the point in the question was originally or your purposely ignoring it.

"I, too, would like to know how to (now) better tag "parks with beaches,"" The question wasn't originally about tagging parks with beaches and I never said it was. It's about tagging beaches that aren't parks as parks or more precisely if beaches are included as part of the leisure=park tag. Which I've repeatedly said. I could give two craps about beaches mapped inside parks. You just made it about that to high jack the discussion and deflect from the original purpose of the question. Which is one of the reasons why I won't answer your specific examples, that and because I'm not going to be bossed around or badgered into doing this your way when you want. It's my question and I'll participate it in how I want, on my time.

As far as your supposed consensus building experience goes, if you were actually as good at it as you claim, you'd know basic consensus building doesn't involve calling other people arrogant or other similar things. Basic mediating 101 is that you don't malign one of the parties to force them into taking a position on something. Its also heavy on sticking to the facts. Which you haven't done and addressing the other person's argument in an evidence based manor. Which you also haven't done. So either your full of it on that or your just horrible at it. Either way, it's 100% useless boasting on your part. Also, if you knew anything about consensus, at least how it works on OSM, you'd know that 1. It doesn't apply to re-tagging things with newer tags. Especially when the old tags were originally added through an import. Which you even admit is the case and that re-tagging of them is already going on with state parks and tagging them as protected areas. So I don't need consensus here and I'm not even sure what you actually have an issue with or why your even involved in this discussion in the first place. If permission was needed to re-tag things OSM would essentially ground to a halt and be useless. If consensus was needed though, in OSM terms I think its 75% need to agree with something. With both me and Mateusz Konieczny saying that beaches don't qualify as parks under the definition of their tags unless they are specifically in parks, that's 66%. It's not 75%, but it's at least a majority and it would be pretty easy to get it above 75% by taking it to the mailing list. Also, as I have said before there has been other incidences of the park tag being removed from beaches and state parks in California by the admins already. So it's like there isn't already precedence for it. And you still haven't given a good or any reason why they should keep the park tag. Except "because I live there and say so." Which isn't really a reason. If you had actually had a good reason for it, I'd be perfectly fine with that, but you haven't even taken a stance on anything for me to agree with or not.

Considering all that, I'm perfectly fine just going about the business of re-tagging things. Otherwise, take an actual position and give a good valid reason why you think beaches that know where else are classified as parks should be tagged that way. If your unwilling to do that though and rather just continue this deflection, personalizing, and other none sense I'm done with the discussion. I'm 100% listening to other people's opinions and changing my perspective, I do it all the time. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have started this discussion. It has nothing to do with trying to force people into tagging something a certain way anymore then any other question here is. It's a question, asked out of genuine curiosity. But it's impossible to change my perspective in cases like this where the person I'm talking to acts the way you have and refuses to actually take a clear position on the subject or back up what you say with evidence. I'm not going to change my view point simply because you say I should. As someone with vast years of experience with consensus building you should know it doesn't work that way. It's pretty basic. So you really should stop with the personal attacks and just provide evidence for what you say. Otherwise, this isn't going anywhere and I'm just going to re-tag things. I'm also 100% fine with starting a 2.0 topic for this that doesn't involve your part.

P.S. I'd also like to know why you fly off the handle every time Pokemon Go players are mentioned in a conversation. They do some legitimately bad tagging and a lot of the instances of what we are talking about is miss-tagging by them. So you can sit there and say whatever you want about my relative newness to OSM, but I've done quit a lot in the small amount of time I've been here, I've invested way more of my life into this then a lot of people who have been here longer have, and I've hundreds of conversations with Pokemon Go mappers on the subject of parks. I've even lost friends over it because I wouldn't let them tag stuff around the town where I live as parks indiscriminately. It's a shame you want to simplify another users knowledge about OSM into how many years they have been here and it shows an utter lack of respect for the contributions and time people have spent at this project. New people or not, and 2 years is actually quit a lot of time, but I treat new editors with way more respect then you've shown me with my 2 years. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:30, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

I have chosen to go "No Contact" with Adamant1 and his frequent word salad. Stevea (talk) 20:44, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

I wouldn't call having a learning disability that causes me to misspell some words and effects my concentration sometimes "word salad." Your free to have your own definition though, but it is interesting that you never provide any evidence for anything you say and I think the fact that you have zero empathy for the learning disability thing and continue to go off about it says more about you then it does me.

As far as you as not contacting me anymore, good. I didn't want to talk to you in the first place in relation to this because I already know what your position was. You refused to stay out of the conversation and let other people comment though. So, your un-asked for and pointless screeds won't be missed. It's also pretty hilarious that your dodging out after all the condescension about the need for conversation, consensus etc. The more likely reason your doing it because you know you don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to this. So your backing out before it really doesn't go your way. In general, it's a typical move by people who lecture everyone else about something not do it themselves. So, consensus, the need for conversation, listening, etc etc is only useful when other people should do it, but then it's not on you to do those things.

Anyway, If know one minds, I will probably start a 2.0 of this topic that doesn't involves Steve's tirades, off topic side tangents etc, and also incorporates new information. So that way other people can have a chance to comment on it if they want. Without having to read through the garbage. Maybe this can archived or something to so the discussion page isn't permanently borked with it. @Mateusz Konieczny would it be possible to do that or does the whole page have to be archived? Or if that's not an option, maybe me and Steve can agree to have our comments deleted to make this easier to read. He seems fine with deleting other comments after the fact already. So I don't see why he'd have a problem with it. Especially since nothing came of the discussion and it will still be in the delete history if need be. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:42, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

I vehemently do not support any deletion of Adamant1's tirades and would consider doing so by anybody (including him) to be counter-productive (tedious and loquacious as this section has become). This would be a version of "selective censorship of behavior Adamant1 would prefer be forgotten." Everybody already and still, right now has a chance to comment after having read the previous spew. (That is, I, stevea, do not agree to delete this section/thread; I believe keeping it "as is" does OSM a service by allowing Adamant1's behavior to "speak for itself," as does mine). Adamant1's "I don't see why he'd have a problem with it" is very much mistaken and is indicative of Adamant1's presumptuous, often-wrong behavior.

I have friends who are developmentally disabled, including those with ADHD. With them I am sensitive and patient and am rewarded with good dialog in return and even continuing and deepening friendship. Also, I have experienced people with personality disorders who spout word salad (which can include perfectly grammatical sentences, but which are so rife with confusing, contradictory semantics, as is Adamant1's) and I absolutely know the difference. I would not have used the phrase "word salad" if it did not apply to Adamant1's ill-communications, but it does, so I did (no matter that Adamant1 can't recognize it, which is nearly universal in those who do it): Adamant1 frequently re-writes, re-cants or fully says he didn't say or do his own words or his own behavior and history (when he accuses me of that, I'm merely correcting minor spelling, syntactical or rarely, social mistakes; I am human and they do put erasers on the tips of pencils). Adamant1's invective and behavior are plain and simply abusive. (Verbal) abuse is abuse, period, full stop. I am not shy to call this what it is, as I have given Adamant1 numerous opportunities to prove himself otherwise, yet he only digs himself in deeper. I feel saddened that I have to say these things in OSM (it is only with great hesitation and trepidation that I do), however I feel it is my duty to continuing harmony in our project that I warn others about this disruptive influence. I am not alone; I get along with 99+% of everybody I encounter here, yet many others in OSM have experienced exactly the same sort of friction with Adamant1 that I have.

Should the topic continue, I might engage, as I do have perspective to offer (which, largely, I already have), but if finer points need to be made, I may very well chime in. But for the benefit of my own continuing positive mental health, I will not engage directly with Adamant1. I encourage others here to establish similar "healthy boundaries." Stevea (talk) 13:53, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

""This would be a version of "selective censorship of behavior Adamant1 would prefer be forgotten.""

Where exactly did I say it would be because I prefer things to be forgotten? Again, another false claim about my intentions that's not backed up by anything, by the person who repeatedly says there are doing nothing but being civil. I specifically suggested it in order to aid in easier reading for anyone that want's to use this discussion page in the future. That's it. The characterization of the suggestion as "selective censorship" is unfounded also. As I said it would be the whole discussion, which isn't selective, and it also wouldn't be "censorship" if the discussion was still viewable by anyone that wanted to look it in the edit history. I've seen it done a few a few times in other places where the conversation was mostly off topic. So I thought id suggest it. That was it. There was no bad intention behind it and in know way do I think it would have been a good idea unless everyone agreed to it. Which I said. I know an easy explanations like that don't feed into your narrative that everything I do is because I'm a bad intentioned troll, but most of the time the things I do or suggest are that simple. If you didn't agree to it, you could have just said so. The rest of your narrative about it was completely unnecessary. Especially considering your whole "I'm the well behaved one here" thing. It's nice to say your so civil, but it's much better to just do it.

As far as the comment about you deleting things yourself, it was in reference to you deleting your bad comments after posting them. Like you did with calling me arrogant and comparing me to an aristocrat just for asking a question about something. If you don't like people calling you out on things like, maybe you shouldn't do them. Again, especially if your going to claim the behavioral high ground you clearly don't have.

"Adamant1's invective and behavior are plain and simply abusive."

Again, if I actually did something wrong, provide an example of it and I will be more then willing to apologize for it and correct my behavior if it's in the wrong. As I did with saying you did ZERO to compromise. Although that was an honest mistake and you still didn't do as much as you could. It doesn't move things forward or foster a civil atmosphere though to repeatedly make blanket statements about people that don't give actual examples of what they have done. Sometimes people aren't aware of how their tone is. At least when I critique your actions, I say specifically what your doing that I think is unproductive to the conversation. Although you've blown it off every time, but its still better then not giving details of what you actual have an issue with. Unless your just making it up. Which is highly possible, or you'd just provide details. Especially since I've repeatedly asked you to and you haven't given any so far but continue to say things about me. I think the best route is to give details or stop talking about me behavior if your not going. It would be good if you stop talking about how virtuous you are to. People can make up their own minds as to your virtue through your actions. By constantly mentioning it, your seriously overcompensating. Which seems weird if your supposedly such a civil person. It should be obvious. People don't need to be told about things repeatedly that are obvious. The same goes for my bad behavior if it exits. If my behavior is really that bad they can see it in my messages, they don't need told about it through your vague insinuations in every message you write.

As far as the "word salad" thing goes, if there's something you weren't clear about in my messages, you were perfectly capable of asking for clarification. I would have been happy clarifying anything I said that needed it. I'm not a mind reader though and everyone writes things that aren't clear sometimes. This isn't a perfect communication channel. So it will happen. I can't be clearer if know one says were I'm not clear though. One persons easily answerable question is another's vaguery. It's not on to decipher which is which for who. It's on you as the person who decided to engage in the discussion to ask for clarification on something when you need it. At least when I'm vague though it's on topic. Whereas, even when your more precise then I am (which is rarely), your posts involve 6 different topics are unrelated to the discussion. Personally, I think its better to be slightly vague on topic then precise and not. That could just be me though. Again, you haven't given any details of what's vague about what I've said either. So your issue with my vagueness is vague itself. Hhhmmm.

Feel free to continue participating in the discussion if you want. I don't really care. I just want it to be productive and I don't think it will be if every other comment is you going off how people should listen more or is a rant about how consensus works. As I said before, those are pretty things that everyone already gets. If its that important that you mention them and if you actually think they are relevant somehow, you could provide a link to something on OSM that talks about how they relate to the discussion. I'd be fine with that, but they shouldn't take up 50% of all the messages you've wrote like they have. Especially considering the other 50% is just endless commentary on my behavior. It might be hard to be involved continue participating though if your not talking to me anymore. Since it was my question and I'm obligated to respond to any new ideas or ask people to clarify things if I feel like it. It would be hard to do if there's two divergent conversations going on with the person where neither one of us responds to what the other is saying and we ignore each other. although I'm inclined to think your "I'm not talking to you anymore was a hollow threat since you responded to my last message. Although, not directly. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:20, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

To answer the question:Can parks include, or be constituted primarily of, beaches? --Yes. --DoctorSpeck (talk) 20:56, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

OK. Why? How do they fit with the whole "managed greenery" thing? Do you think similar things like deserts can be parks? Btw, I'm not talking about like a "desertish" park in AZ or NV where there's managed cactus plants and intentional landscaping, that's maintained by a grounds keeper and still has playgrounds/benches/paths etc in it. I mean, somewhere that's a desert in a mostly wild (or more preferably fully wild) bare state, with no plants managed or otherwise, that you would consider a park. If you don't think deserts are parks, how would it then be different from a beach, when they are essentially the same thing except one is near water? --Adamant1 (talk) 08:44, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

A desert is a descriptor of nature, an ecosystem, etc. That's why desert is a subkey of natural=*. leisure=park is a descriptor of how people use the piece of land. Usually public, or communal. When I evaluate if something is a "park" I think about how people use it, and access. Generally, before adding a park, i try to find information from the local government agency. In my mind a park must have definite boundaries. ie. in a state where all beaches are public but may have restricted access via adjacent property owners, beaches in general would not be parks. But if a city fences off an area that has a beach, and designates it a park, I find that argument compelling. Defining a park based on what flora or fauna is present seems asinine to me.

When you ask if beaches can be parks; Something like these come to mind:

* https://hampton.gov/3503/Buckroe-Beach-Park

* https://www.gloucesterva.info/Facilities/Facility/Details/Gloucester-Point-Beach-Park-9
--DoctorSpeck (talk) 05:17, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Hhhhmmm, fair enough. I think there's beaches that people can't or don't access isn't there? If so and they aren't called beaches, what are they called? Sand bars? I'm not being obtuse. I just never really thought of it, but yeah "beach" isn't a natural descriptor, but I don't necessarily think it takes people to make it qualify as one. I agree about parks needing definite boundaries. That one of the main reasons why I disagree with Stevea's overly broad definition. I think I said it in the more general question, but for me, in order for something to qualify as a park you have to be able to tell when you enter and leave it. That's why I don't think national parks count or any of the other things he gives in his definition. Maybe in "wooded areas" but in general that's to broad and completely meaningless. I can probably go for beaches being parks if they have well defined, clearly visible boundaries. Beaches that go on forever with no way to tell where one beach stops and the other starts (like some in California) it shouldn't be a park though. If it's fenced or walled off, I don't see why not. The way Stevea has them defined as beaches, desert, alpine, and wooded areas is way to general. Since like literally everywhere is one of those things. I think it should be more about leisure then recreation also. Since it's not a recreation= tag. I appreciate the constructive feedback and answer. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:22, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

At least in my part of the country, beach is most definitely a natural feature, area of (mostly sand) which lacks vegetative cover, which usually gently slopes to meet the water body. On the ocean front it often lies between a dune line and the ocean. this is incontrast to areas where land cover or rocks go right up to the water's edge or swamp/marsh areas.

Beach as refers to a human use may have different connotations about what is allowed/access, but that is distinct from it's natural phenomena.
On the distinction between leisure & recreation. I think you'll find that many people do not distinguish between the two, and often land set aside for parks will combine the two (softball fields and picnic shelters, playgrounds all together) trying to force a distinction may well be a foolish errand that will give more problems than what benefit may be gained.
When I look at all this mess in this discussion page, I find myself asking "what problem are these people trying to solve?" Is there a data consumer that can't get what they need? or is it just someone getting upset that there are a lot of Pokemon Go edits trying to add parks? If it's the latter redefining what constitutes a park won't change the behavior of folks who don't care about the impact to the map to begin with. We'll still have to curate and verify that the edits are in-fact not vandalism. Edit wars and someone trying to tightly control the definition of "park" for which many people have a instinctual idea of what it is seems counterproductive for a community run mapping project.--DoctorSpeck (talk) 17:15, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Speaking as SteveA, I categorically state there is no such thing as "SteveA's overly broad definition." I am participating in a discussion about leisure=park, not defining it. My authorship of the "Mapping history in the USA" paragraph simply states what much tagging in the USA is and has been like and likely why, this is not me re-defining leisure=park. Thank you for allowing to clarify my words, and avoiding any potential misunderstanding as they might be mischaracterized. Stevea (talk) 19:15, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

You put "as in North America it is also applied to beaches, campgrounds and other public recreation areas (which can be desert, alpine, wooded...)" In the article and you didn't cite a reference for it. So, it's your definition as far as your the one that introduced it into the article and are tagging based on it, un-sourced. It doesn't mean that other people might not share it, but it's still your definition. Since your the one that brought it into this. Just like if write something in the wiki, I'm responsible for it as the person putting it there and by adding it, it's implied that I endorse it. Since it's my work. Unless I specifically state otherwise through direct quote or some other means. Which you didn't do.

As far as what purpose this is trying to solve, there's several for me at least.

1. There's been many contentious conversations around this in America, not just with Stevea or me. That has led to a lot of unnecessary edit warring, hurt feelings, and people being turned off from contributing to the project. A clearer more solid definition that we can cite instead of having to re-mediate it every time the subject comes up would be good. Consider the definition a necessary mediator in this context.

2. Not having a clear definition leads to things not being tagged properly or at all. I'm not making a value judgement of "good versus bad" tagging by saying that like Stevea says I am either. It seriously impacts the addition of more descriptive tags like natural=beach or natural=wood in clear cases where they would fit better. It also leads to a lot of junk tag stacking where people add a bunch of tags on top of each other like landuse_1, landuse_2, lesiure_1, lesisure_2 etc where individual things then don't get mapped in legitimate parks because "a park can be both a wood and a park. So I'll just add both tags to the thing instead of mapping the wood separately that's inside the park." There's a couple of thousand instances of that kind of thing at this point. A common one is leisure=park with a leisure_1=playground because neither has a clear definition and so people just tag them on the same thing. Which means the playground never gets mapped.

3. However we in America might conceptualize things, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, other people in the rest of the world clearly don't conceptualize them that way. So, although we might get that a beach tagged as a park is really a beach. Other people might not. Which causes seriously problems when searching for these things by people tourists, which there a ton of California, and even people from here that might be as "in the know" as we are. As it currently is, if you search for a park, you get a lot of things that might not be parks and therefore not what your actually looking for, and on the other hand if you look for beaches you don't get a good search for them because a lot of them are missing the natural=beach tagging as a result of being tagged as a park, and parks come first in priority 99% of the time anyway. And how is anyone supposedly to know when they do a search for a park near a beach that what they are getting is a park (I.E. a small grassy area with benches) versus a beach (somewhere they can go surfing or play in the water)? because there's plenty of grassy parks next to ocean and next to beaches. So if they are all tagged the same, there's zero to tell them apart. Sometimes people just want to sit on the grass and not deal with the sand and waves, but still be at the ocean.

These problems were found out by me through a few years of actual mapping of these things and many discussions on the subject, both here and in the real world due to living around situations where problems like this come up. They are real problems, that tagging things with park:type or saying "well, lets just go with how people in California categorize things and call it good" don't solve. It's not being brought up to just to force a certain way to map things on people like Steava insinuates it is or to stick to Pokemon Go mappers. Although figuring it would have the side benefit of me not receiving death threats from them anymore for re-tagging things, but that's not why I'm in it. I just think the map should be easy to use and clearly understandable for average map viewers. Not just ones in California, as this is a global project, and the way it is right now with park tagging it's not that way. I could really care less what definition we ultimately decide on, but there should be a definition. I have zero problem with "relativistic" tagging in general either, but I do think there's certain things in OSM that are to important and universally used to allow for it on them. To me parks are one of them. As like I, 58% of California is parks, 89% of NV is, and like 38% of America overall is. That's to big a part of the map to just leave up factionalism and endless edit warring. I do think also that Stevea is "trying to tightly control the definition of "park"" here so he can do the same in his little part of California. Which is fine. I can understand him not wanting things he worked on there to be messed with. It's clear that's what he's doing since he didn't get involved in this or put the disclaimer in the article until I started asking about parks there and brought the subject up here. Again, that's fine, but for him to completely deny what the things going on with the map in his local area as an influence on his behavior isn't good either. This is something I've thought about and dealt with in real ways for 2 years. It's not a reaction to any single thing. Let alone the stuff with Stevea. I would have brought it up eventually anyway. He's also not saying why things are "likely" tagged in America either. He's making clear statements as to the reasons they are tagged that way. Things aren't tagged that way here either.

As I've said before, 89% of NV clearly isn't tagged as leisure=park and neither is 38% of America overall. Only a tiny fraction is, but there's a lot of other ways these things are tagged everywhere. Which he completely ignores in his section about the issue and also in discussions. Along with the problems tagging everything "recreational" clearly causes. I'm pretty agnostic on how things are tagged. Except if it leads to problems, but if whatever tagging scheme we go with solves those problems, id be 100% fine with it. I don't care one or another outside of that. Whereas, it seems that Stevea just wants to say "well, this is what we say parks are here. So, that's it." and call it good. Then he edits the wiki article to suit how he see's things and goes off about how people that disagree with him should just "listen more." Which doesn't move things forward at all or deal with it. At least that's been my impression. I've suggested creating an individual project page for this, which I think would help a lot and give us more room to discuss it and come to consensus on how things actually are in America, but that was shot down by Stevea as attempts at censorship or some other none sense. So.."shrug." I still think it would be a good idea though. As it would be impossible to lay out all the history, pro's and cons, etc of park tagging in America in the general article and we already do it for things like how roads are mapped differently in each country. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:24, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Btw, the distinction between recreation and leisure is already one OpenStreetMap makes. Gyms are amenities, outdoor sports are tagged as sports, etc. I'm sure the word "recreation" was around when they created the leisure tag. There is probably a good reason why they went with the word leisure instead of something more general like recreation. I'll look more into it though. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:38, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

I did my very best to follow as much of that as I could and I struggled, truly (including reading all of it and getting stymied as I was blocked by intermediate edits). Let me begin right at the top of it. Me putting "leisure=park is also applied to beaches, campgrounds and other public recreation areas (which can be desert, alpine, wooded...)" into the wiki was simply my observation of "what is, now." Not as an assertion of my opinion that that is how things should be. It is me being descriptive, not prescriptive. I have attributed this to legacy tagging and fully agree that "cleaning up" (better tagging, though I'm not sure we have consensus as to how) such legacy tagging is an important goal. As I think it best we eat this elephant one bite at a time, I'll say that, pause and see if that helps. Stevea (talk) 00:57, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

"into the wiki was simply my observation of "what is, now." Exactly. It's your observation. Which is based on your opinion of what your observing. It doesn't mean that's actually how it is, but even if it was, a tagging article page in my opinion is to describe the proper way to do things. Not make observations about all the possible ways to do things. There's no clause at the end of the sentence that it might not be proper to tag those things with the leisure park tag either. You also undercut that through the multiple other sentences where you say "this is why American's do it this way" and by saying it's done that way a lot in America when its not. It's just misleading. If someone from America came along, they would probably be like "oh, well that's how American's do it and there's nothing in the section saying otherwise. So I guess I'll just tag things that way." Like I said in another place, if you want it to be natural, state why it might be wrong and say what the alternatives are. Along with their pro's and cons. In general though, beyond the basics of the tag, tag pages are suppose to be prescriptive not descriptive. Most pages don't describe the intricate details or tagging nuances of the things being tagged. That's the simple reality that this is a wiki about and for OSM. Not to tell people the general meaning of things and the prescription of how to use this tag is already pretty clear, whatever local variations there might be.

"I have attributed this to legacy tagging and fully agree that "cleaning up" (better tagging, though I'm not sure we have consensus as to how) such legacy tagging is an important goal." Good. We've been talking about this for a few months and that's the first time you've agreed that it's due to legacy tagging and that it should be cleaned up. Since your now making that assertion, you should remove the clause in the section about that it's due to how "Americans" prefer to define and tag things. The issue is 99% percent on California and 99% due to the import. It should say so and not add other side things, like that it's"due to American English usage of "park"" For all we know the screw up on the import could have been any number of reasons. It doesn't really matter anyway. As you say, describe "what is, now." Right now we know there's was a bad import that introduced a bunch of bad park tags that haven't been fully cleaned up yet. That's it. Everything else is speculation. Have other people tagged national or state parks as leisure=park since then? Sure, but in extremely small amounts and there's no way to know if it's due to how they defined parks, because of tagging for rendering, because nothing else came up in iD Editor that seemed to fit, or any other number of reasons. I know for a fact in my own experience where I've had many conversations about this with people, it was either tagging for the rendering, Pokemon Go, or because another near by state/national park was tagged that way. Not once has anyone said it was due to our American definition of parks. So cool your observation says one thing. My observation, evidence of looking at the map, and two years of having conversations about this specific topic tells me another. I'm not even saying either is wrong. I'm just saying the evidence is at least unsure enough to remove the paragraph from the page about it or at least heavily edit it to show every perspective. That's it.

As far as coming up with a solution, that was what the point in posting this in the first place was and I'd love to do that. So lets do it. Create a protect page or something and lets get to it. You didn't want to until just now though and you spent a lot of time defending the park:type tag. No matter what your saying now. That's fine, no big deal. I'm glad your changing your position and want to deal with it. I appreciate the willingness to evolve on things, really. So lets deal with it. What part of the elephant do you want to chomp into first? --Adamant1 (talk) 03:57, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

"Seven colons deep" into this rabbit hole, Adamant1, I'm pretty lost. First (again, I'm trying to do things in bite size chunks, not kilobytes of huh?), I find your logic either confusing, faulty or both. "Observation based on my opinion of what I'm observing...doesn't mean that's actually how it is...(means) Americans who came along would...(say) American's (sic) do it this way...and by saying it's done that way" (I didn't, you are wildly twisting my words to a point where I honestly can't follow them as my own, so how do you expect anybody else to?) "and by saying it's done that way a lot in America when its (sic) not." Wow. Unparsable, and I'm putting serious effort into gleaning what you mean.

Tags are supposed to be descriptive AND prescriptive on their wiki page, emphasis on prescriptive (with descriptive giving context or adding flavor). That is precisely why I felt compelled to say "and in the USA, there is some history which diverges from what we prescribe here in this wiki." What I mean by that is "hey everybody, we've got a semantic divergence here and we need to do something about it." I don't say what, I don't say how, I simply bring it to the attention of wiki readers so they'll say "OK, things are different how we've been using this tag in the USA." Oh, yeah, and, there's probably somewhere (here, other places) where some Discussion is going on where we talk about what we're going to do about it. That's all. I, we, others, we're largely in a listening mode. And one person at a time, one or two thoughts we might offer at a time, we're in a "here, let me offer this to the conversation, constructively..." mode. I try not to speculate, I wish to present the problem in a "presentable, digestible" way so that we can solve it. Your experiences (tagging for the renderer, Pokemon Go...) are important, but they are not the entire universe of experiences. I identified the way things are in the USA because it is "the tip of the spear," a good-sized chunk of the problem, it is causing contention because of the relative size (moderate, at least) of the community of people it affects, and seems important to solve to prevent further contention (and there IS contention). How/whether the iD editor "presents" things is pretty far down the pike of how to solve this, that's like trying to take salt out of the served dish when you should have added only a certain amount at the beginning of the recipe.

If it was your point to "come up with a solution...(and) get to it" then please do so. But I don't read you doing that. Sure, we discuss here, that's important, it allows voices to be heard and inputs to be exchanged. And who says I "spent a lot of time defending" the park:type tag? (Actually, don't answer that). I'm an observer here (on occasion maybe a recorder/secretary), not a crusader for a particular position.

You seem to be wanting to throw down a gauntlet to me so I'll offer you a bite of elephant (which seems antagonistic, as I believe we were already at that meeting point). OK, how about this? Let's back up, I'll ask you (I'm asking you) to recognize I'm not a crusader for any particular point of view (nor is anybody here, really, yet) and that what we're saying is that there is a semantic divergence between "what the Page says" and "how the tag is used, especially in the USA." Can we do that, at least? If we can't, we're simply chasing our tails in an endless circle. Stevea (talk) 05:41, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure what's Unparsable about "American's don't tag parks based on the definition that parks are beaches, woods, alpine, areas etc and it's only because of a bad import." That seems pretty clear to me. I've said it about 12 different times and you still haven't gotten it. So, I think your just going to pick apart how it's said as a way to ignore it no matter how I say it.

"That is precisely why I felt compelled to say "and in the USA, there is some history which diverges from what we prescribe here in this wiki." I'm not debating your feelings about why you put it there. I'm saying your conclusion that its due to "semantic divergence" is wrong. I've been pretty on that. Again, multiple times in many different ways. With supporting evidence. But I know "oh, your sentences are so unparsable, I just can't gleam anything useful from them not matter how hard I try." While at the same time I'm getting perfectly fine responses from other people. Whatever.

"Your experiences (tagging for the renderer, Pokemon Go...) are important, but they are not the entire universe of experiences" Where did I say they were? I specifically said that we both had different observations of the problem and that was fine, but that we should integrate both our experiences into this. Nothing about that is saying my observations are the "entire universe of experiences." Again, your just saying a bunch of stuff, not backing it up with anything, and acting like it's fact. Either cite where I said it so there is't this useless personal back and forth or don't claim I did.

"I identified the way things are in the USA because it is "the tip of the spear," a good-sized chunk of the problem" No you didn't. There's no mention of nmixter's problematic import. You just said it was due to "semantic issues." Which it's clearly not. So that's the exact opposite of what you did.

"If it was your point to "come up with a solution...(and) get to it" then please do so." That's exactly what I was doing with the original question. On the one hand you sit here and go off for 3 weeks about how the original question is to vague. Then on the other, you go off about taking it one bite at a time. So which one is it? You can't have it both ways. I think you just don't any questions asked or answered. You rather just "show the tip of the spear" (in other words, your small narrative of it that keeps things to obscure to do anything) and leave it at that. Otherwise, you wouldn't be picking apart literally everything like you are.

"I'm an observer here (on occasion maybe a recorder/secretary), not a crusader for a particular position" Now you are, or not really. It's none of those things to tell me "get to it." So stop with trying to act like your not taking a position or trying affect anything.

"recognize I'm not a crusader for any particular point of view (nor is anybody here, really, yet)" Know where did I say anyone was a "crusader." People have given their positions on things though, including you. It's not a bad thing, but to act like it's somehow a clean slate in the conversation suddenly is intentionally obscuring what's already been said.

"that what we're saying is that there is a semantic divergence between "what the Page says" and "how the tag is used, especially in the USA."" No we aren't. I'm saying your fundamentally wrong on that, have zero proof for it, and your purposely ignoring the counter evidence (or claiming that it's none sense like me saying it's the "entire universe of experience"). Ultimately, there isn't any evidence on the map or otherwise to support your claim. It's due to a bad import and other semantic related things. That's it. So no, we aren't going to agree on that. On the one hand your saying your just an "observer," but then on the other your saying WE should agree on something. Again, you can't have it both ways. Either your involved in this or your not. If your not, there is no WE and there is no agreeing to anything you say about it based on you asking people to.

"If we can't, we're simply chasing our tails in an endless circle." We're only chasing our tails because your critiquing everything I say on a menial surface level while ignoring everything else, because it's to vague, or to specific, or there's to many commas, or I edited it so you couldn't follow it, or it's to unparsable, or I'm just doing all this to force people to tag things a certain way, etc etc. There's always something. Then you take specific positions on things, while claiming your not because your just "an observer." So, the endless circle is 100% on you. I'm not chasing my tail. I've asked specific questions, commented on specific things, and made specific suggestions. You haven't. Then when I ask you to so we can not "chase our tails" and deal with actual specifics, you say some none sense about how I'm "wanting to throw down a gauntlet." Whatever that means. So should we deal with specific's so we don't chase our tails ,or is it throwing down the gauntlet to ask for things we can do? Like with everything else, you seem to want it both ways. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:59, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Btw, the message above that you found so hard to follow "despite your best efforts" was in direct response to DoctorSpeck asking what the problem with tagging beaches as parks is. So I don't really care what issues you had with it. By interjecting your opinion about it and writing a bunch of other stuff on top of it that wasn't directly to my message, it comes off like your trying to bury message that point out things you don't like. Especially if your going to go off about how "I, we, others, we're largely in a listening mode. And one person at a time, one or two thoughts we might offer at a time, we're in a "here, let me offer this to the conversation, constructively..." mode." Do some listening then, or, if you must respond throw out one thought, and leave it at that. Nothing in that message or any other you've written here has been "one thought" though. Know one said we're only having one thought either, except you. So again, you tell people what they should be doing, but then again you don't even do it yourself. I thought we were past that. If not, can we please be? --Adamant1 (talk) 10:08, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Stevea's unilateral edits of the park article

NO ACTION:

Both Stevea and Adamant1 have been blocked temporarily in response to their conduct on this page and elsewhere. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 06:24, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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It seems that user Stevea added a bunch of clauses to the park page about how parks are defined and tagged in the USA without discussing them first and while an ongoing conversation on the topic was going on that clearly hasn't been resolved yet. I'd like to remove the section he added until it has actually been discussed thoroughly and we can come to a clear consensus about it.

Also, I find his move of interjecting things into the wiki page without discussion or consensus particularly disheartening in light of how much he maligned other people, repeatedly over the need of those things before they could change anything. I'm perfectly fine with what he added being in there in an edited form probably if it's backed up by evidence and just as there's "consensus," "discussion," "listening (at lots of it)," blah blah blah first. Especially since those are his own standards. At least he said they were. Although he seems to be discard them when it doesn't suit him. As can be seen by this whole thing.

There's also many things in what he wrote that aren't true and don't anything behind them except his own opinions. For instance, the sentence "in North America as it is also applied to beaches, campgrounds and other public recreation areas." 1. The problem is mainly only in California, not in the wider USA 2. It's mainly only because of a single bad import years ago that is still in the process of being cleaned up. Which he know's full well is the cause of it and not a bunch of people deciding to tag those as leisure=park organically, because "that's how people in America define them."

In fact, plenty of places in California that were formally tagged as parks due to the import have been re-tagged with newer, more appropriate tags since then. Know one has taken issue with 99% of them or re-tagged them back to leisure=park in the meantime, because it's just how we define those things. So by putting it in the wiki's definition that those things are naturally tagged that way because it's how "American's" define them (especially with beaches), when it's not the case it miss represents the facts. It also risks reversing the progress that has been made on the re-tagging efforts. Plus, it gives the wrong impression to people from America who are reading the article and don't know any better that they should tag those things as parks when 1. it might not fit what they are tagging 2. It's not how American's actually do it 3. there's better tags for a lot of these things to be tagged with. It's especially not true that "American English usage of "park" as "a large area of land kept in its natural state for public recreational use," Steavea is clearly editing the wiki to fit his definition of what a park is. He's simply making it about "how Americans do things" as a way to get around the generally accepted, global definition of a park and to not have a wider conversation about it's definition that might contract him. It's obviously to serve his own purposes in Santa Cruz. Which is the main place with the issue, especially with beaches.

Know where along the coast of California except for there are beaches tagged as parks. Except in cases where they are a part of parks, but it's the rare exception. Beaches in Southern California aren't tagged as parks, beaches along the coast of Louisiana aren't tagged as parks, beaches along the Florida coast aren't mainly tagged as parks, beaches in New York aren't mainly tagged as parks. Because this is simply a Santa Cruz issue, by him, that's due to a bad import in that area, that he's trying to deflect from dealing with by putting it on the rest of America when it's not America's problem. There's ultimately zero evidence people in America think beaches, deserts, alpine areas, or woods, are parks. I live in American and haven't heard anyone refer to those things as parks, they are rarely tagged as parks in America either. Except in cases where it's explicitly stated in the places name or where its 100% clear those things are part of a park. He's already done similar shady things like this to get way to, like mapping path's that don't exist through people's back yards to use as evidence that densely wooded areas, in gully's with creeks and zero way to access them by anyone, are parks. So he clearly just wants to be right and will do whatever it takes to be. Including saying a stuff about how American's do things that have zero evidence.

In general, broad statements that can't be supported through evidence like "Some are tagged both leisure=park and boundary=national_park, which does not seem contradictory to many Americans" shouldn't be included on the main article page of such an important tag to OSM. I'd also include the supposedly American definition of a park as "a large area of land kept in its natural state for public recreational use" in that also. Especially since British language usage is favored in OSM and there was no discussion about redefining the tag in that way. There's zero reason to take an American supremacy slant to the definition of parks. Especially since we don't even define them that way. So if know one has an issue with it, I'm going to remove his un-discussed, not proven and easily dis-proven ,edit from the article page. Until it's been discussed more here, or probably more importantly on the tagging mailing list (probably the American one would be good). What he wrote is clearly bunk and that's what he expects everyone else to do. Mateusz Konieczny even asked him to discuss the beaches tagged as parks question on the mailing list if he thought they should be tagged that way. So he shouldn't have unilaterally added it into the article without doing that first.

However people in America do or don't personally define parks anyway, it shouldn't include "wooded areas," Whatever that means, in tagging practice. As it's to broad and explicitly goes against the whole "A park is an area of open space." Which the article is clear about. If he want's to dispute that or encourage people to tag "wooded" areas as parks, he should question the validity of the tag itself, over all. Instead of just redefining it based on the opinions of "Americans" whatever they might or might not be. In a way that's so broad it makes the tag essentially useless here. Since with his definition of how we define parks as woods, deserts, beaches, and alpine areas, the tag could essentially be applied everywhere here. Indiscriminate of anything else. Including the ability for leisure to take place there or not. The article also explicitly says "This tag is intended for urban parks with managed greenery, located within settlements" None of those places have managed greenery and most of them aren't "located within settlements." Again, if his problem is with the way the tag defines parks, he should just dispute those things of the tag, overall. Not create a different definition just to suit how he want's it to be used, that makes the tag completely useless and encourages miss-tagging. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:41, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Everything I said in the Page's Introductory Paragraph 3 is factually, provably true. I have been contributing to thousands of pages (well, hundreds of wiki) exactly thusly for nearly ten years, sometimes with discussion and consensus (examples would be tedious as this essentially self-documents), sometimes simply to say "this is how things are in OSM right now." Nobody complains, unless I make a minor error, it is called to my attention and I quickly correct it. I can count those occasions on one hand, maybe two; we are all human. I have not maligned anybody, except it appears Adamant1 believes I have maligned him. "Blah, blah, blah" contributes nothing to any discussion, anywhere, anytime, this one included and is simply inflammatory and lazy writing. Rather than another of his screeds (this new section where he was careful to link my name with "unilateral," like any wiki edit already is, as he falsely appears to tar me with his constant "your (you're) wrong" brush), instead, I'd like to see Adamant1 propose a draft replacement paragraph 3. Can you do that, Adamant1? Politely and without throwing rocks? There is a perfectly polite talk-us discussion which overlaps this, too. Are you reading that? Might you contribute to that discussion as well? As this flame war better becomes only a brush fire, I believe this discussion more properly belongs in a more-US-centric context than this global-level leisure=park Talk page. I won't bother disproving the remainder of Adamant1's additional false allegations above, it is his tactic to exhaust me (and others, as I've discovered from his similar interactions with virtually everybody else he engages with), and I am exhausted with his scattered thoughts and less-than-fully-coherent babble. I will say that I edited the wiki to better fit the global (OSM-wide) definition, with consensus, not by "unilateral" definition. Adamant1's allegation that I did otherwise is patently false and I have cited the American English definition of "park" numerous times in at least two (three?) wiki where I did so simply to explain and clarify "how (and perhaps why) people have tagged" (descriptive) not "how people should tag" (prescriptive). The only exception I can think of were my contributions to United_States_admin_level where it is crystal-clear that wiki is "more prescriptive" (and was written with A GREAT DEAL OF consensus) as it is well-complemented with (and points to) Minh Nguyen's WikiProject United States/Boundaries, described as "more descriptive." The most helpful thing that could happen here and now would be for Adamant1 to submit his Draft 1 of an improved Paragraph 3: put up or shut up. However, I don't think that's what he'll do. I would be delighted for him to prove me wrong about that. Stevea (talk) 00:33, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Hey hey hey. If your going to go off about how I need to stop talking, throw insults around about it, and go off about how your not going to talk to me anymore, don't inject yourself into my discussion posts dude. I'm not doing this with you. Piss off. I didn't ask for your opinion and I don't give two craps about it. I'm not discussing crap with you. Actually do what you said you were going to and leave me the hell alone dude. Go map some more fake paths or something. I don't care, just stay out of my discussions. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:11, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

"Piss off. I didn't ask for your opinion and I don't give two craps about it. I'm not discussing crap with you." - such comments are utterly not acceptable in any situation. Please stop doing that. Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 07:22, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

"It seems that user Stevea added a bunch of clauses to the park page about how parks are defined and tagged in the USA without discussing them first" this is perfectly fine and normal. Typical next step is to make your own edit, and start discussion in case of a conflict. I see no edits at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Tag:leisure%3Dpark&action=history made by you Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 07:19, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

" I have not maligned anybody"

"I consider it resolved. If you don't consider it resolved, resolve it already. But don't leave it unresolved, promise to get to it and never resolve it. Which is what you do. Talk, talk, talk, never has time to map.", ""Grow a pair, Adamant1: map.", "me avoiding the same behavior I've seen in dark people (as in "dark tetrad," or "psychotic"). It isn't that you frighten me, it's more like I don't want to have anything to do with you by continuing go-nowhere discussions, "Dear God in Heaven above, hear my prayer that this sad soul find productive use of his time, not waste mine. Amen.", "Anybody else reading this: there is no winning with this guy except to simply not play his game.", "Paint the damn canvas, boy. I'm damn tired of seeing your vomit word salad instead.", "In short, shut up and map.", ". I won't even wish you "good luck" any more, even though I believe you desperately need it.", "As others notice me not defending myself at Adamant1's spurious, false attacks, he should crawl back into shatever corner from which he wriggled up from. {It's corner btw} I choose to engage less, less, and finally, not at all."do you simply wish to bullyrag a decade of tagging parks in the USA with nothing to show for it instead of a pile of insults?", "Try, try again. You buy no time spewing that, sez i. You don't like Sunny Cove? Map it. Or shut the fu*k up. I'm tired of your verbal vomit abuse time-wasting spin-around-in-circles-go-nowhere. Map. Or shut the fu*k up. You've been given a hundred opportunities.", "Reaching agreement" is something you repeatedly have proven to me and others you have difficulty achieving. Your rancorous tantrums so frequently red-line into verbal abuse" {Hhhmm, like saying "Map. Or shut the fu*k up."?}, "This (changeset) seemed a simple "RTFM" reply I could make which broke my "No Contact," yet your petulant, bitchy, argumentativeness", "Your days here are likely numbered" {in another message he went off about he had friends in the DWG that didn't like me, who would ban me for him, and that talk about me behind my back}, "you deepen your slide into "poor OSM mapper", "I understand you wish for there to be a wholesale conversion of potentially every park in California to not be tagged leisure=park",

Anyway, there's a few quotes from public discussions by the person claiming they didn't malign anyone. There's plenty more, both public and private. Also, notice the multiple times he said he wasn't going to discuss things with me anymore, then did, then went off on me talking. When he initiated most of this. Including commenting here. Stevea, I was willing to admit my behavior in this could have been better. Even though I didn't say half the stuff you did. It's to bad your not willing to. Also, stay the hell away from me and my discussions.

Mateusz Konieczny, I have every right to ask someone not to communicate with me anymore if they have repeatedly been harassing and are unable to talk in a civil, constructive manor (as I illustrated above that Stevea has done and been incapable of). I'm not going to waste my time on someone that tells other people to "shut the fu*k up" or calls them psychotic. It's my prerogative. I also don't appreciate you repeatedly calling me out for things, while not doing it to others. It's extremely one sided and un-fair.

"Typical next step is to make your own edit, and start discussion in case of a conflict." I'm not going to discuss it with him. It's 100% guaranteed their will be a conflict, because that's his MO. I shouldn't have to make my own edits to article to build on what he said when it's a patently false claim that can be easily disproved in the first place. There's really nothing that needs to be discussed about it. It's just 100% straight wrong. You can look at the map of America and see that it is. So there's zero point. If I do edit it, it will just be a bunch of "no your wrong" edits on top of "no your wrong edits" anyway. Which won't get this anywhere and will just make us both look bad. He's the one that went off about consensus and not doing things without discussing them anyway. He should practice what he preaches by removing the false information and discussion it proper channels like the mailing list. That's what he said I should do for things. I'm 100% tired and fed up with the endless one sided stuff around here where everyone expects everyone else to do things they won't. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:59, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm a reasonable person, but I honestly think we have a real, live personality-disordered person here (Cluster B? Histrionic Personality Disorder). Don't feed the troll. Stevea (talk) 08:14, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

"personality-disordered person" - this is also comment that should not be made. Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 08:43, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

"I'm a reasonable person, but I honestly think we have a real, live personality-disordered person here" In other words "Don't look at me. Look over there instead." So much deflection, so little self reflection. @Mateusz_Konieczny thanks ;) --Adamant1 (talk) 09:07, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

OK, Mateusz, my apologies to Adamant1. I do repeat "don't feed the troll." My people skills are fine, it's my tolerance to idiotic/foolish behavior that might need some work.

However, Adamant1 appears to be presently (and over the last six hours) vandalizing perfectly valid data (citing no sources or from re-draws of unspecified imaging layers, deleting or changing multiple residential and commercial landuse (multi)polygons, as well as park polygons (there are at least two state-government-sourced "official" datasets which I and others have curated through five versions over nine years), uses the "WIP" abbreviation in nearly every changeset comment in an attempt to say "work in progress; wet paint here, do not disturb" and other vandalistic tactics. Please see changesets 69623505, 69627906, 69628483, 69628557, 69628743, 69628982, 69629264, 69631411 and 69631800 where he calls existing tagging "massively dumb" and "fake." I have begun to issue changeset notices that I believe all of these changesets should be reverted, as I haven't fully determined what he has changed (I can mostly), though I do get unusual conflicts as I begin the reversion process (like he "poisoned" the data somehow; I've never seen that). I have not done any reversions yet, except for examining his changes and finding they do, indeed, qualify as vandalism — what appears to be a "vindictive" sort. I've done my best to engage positively with this person in true OSM fashion: reaching out, consensus-building, dissolving misunderstandings, tutoring/mentoring as necessary, offering complements when warranted while holding the high road, yet I only absorbed absolute body-blows of abusive language from him in return. We all have our breaking points, I have reached mine with Adamant1. It isn't personal with him, I simply want high-quality data in our map, my tens of thousands of edits prove that.

In my opinion, this train wreck of a mapper should have been at least blocked solely for his vicious and abusive language and attitude, (though I recently said to a member of the DWG that I rightly leave those decisions to them — and BTW, I never said I had "friends" on the DWG who "would ban him for me" that's another slanderous lie among many of Adamant1's). However, now his behavior has gone beyond "simply" insulting, abusive language to active, ongoing destruction of data in our map: there really is no other way to describe it. As I (politely, correctly) complete my changeset notifications that these appear to be vandalism, I'm qualified to revert them and spend the time it will take healing the damage he has caused. But (and this is solely one person's opinion), afterwards (or even now) I believe a block or even ban on Adamant1 is fully warranted. He is a massively disruptive influence on OSM, and I'm glad I've spent/lost "only" a couple of weeks of time to his antics. I would appreciate additional feedback from the community, whether on my past actions, future plans on what to do w.r.t. reverting his changesets or simply "well, you could have done this differently or better, Steve." But please, OSM community, don't leave me twisting in the wind alone wondering where all the voices of sanity are, chime in, please. Stevea (talk) 09:39, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

General notes: insulting others in not OK and should not be done. In case of undesirable edits the best first step is to leave changeset comments on affected edits. Also, long text is less likely to be read than a short text. Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 09:48, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

OK, I'm about halfway through examining the nine changesets I noted above, yet it's about 0300 here and I need sleep. Tomorrow I'll repair the damage. Stevea (talk) 09:57, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

"However, Adamant1 appears to be presently (and over the last six hours) vandalizing perfectly valid data" Changes to a wood a few other things that he said repeatedly I should "Map. Or shut the fu*k up." I'd hardly call mapping a wood and adjusting an industrial boundary to not go over said wood as vandalism. It's obvious he told me to go ahead and make the edits so he could then scream foul and try to set me up for vandalism. There was no "deliberate destruction" of anything that be in the map on my part though. Using the images OSM provides to map things or using the abbreviation of WIP in a changeset can hardly be called vandalism. There is also no embargo on people editing things in Santa Cruz. So feel free to report for me vandalism Stevea. Good luck proving intent behind my behavior and defending your actions, including telling me repeatedly to go and edit things. Even after I explicitly asked you if you were going to cry foul about vandalism if I did. It was clearly your intention to from the beginning. Btw, if you revert me yourself based your unfounded allegations of vandalism I'll report you for edit warring. If your going to make claims about me, then do things through the proper channels. If you are 100% correct and in the right, the it shouldn't matter. Otherwise, your using back channels to get around being accountable for your actions (like your lame attempt to set me up for this).

"I believe a block or even ban on Adamant1 is fully warranted" of course you would. You've been gunning for it from the beginning of this because you have nothing legitimate. So you repeatedly pushed my buttons in attempt to drive me to the point of doing something that would get me banned. It's a pretty shameless thing to do, but its clearly all you have. Like I said when you threatened me about how your friends in the DWG would ban me, if I did something wrong that warrants banning so be it. It will be on me. I don't have a problem with it. Things happen. So instead of all the copulating and drama, just report me for vandalism if I really did it. Otherwise, drop it.

"I never said I had "friends" on the DWG who "would ban him for me" I'm perfectly fine providing the quote. Although I rather not. There's already one above where you said I'm thin ice with the DWG and made a veiled threat about me getting banned and how people in the DWG say they don't like me. It's cool. They can have their opinions. I never said I was 100% pleasant to deal with all the time.

"Tomorrow I'll repair the damage" I'll report you for edit warring if you do. You have to prove there was actually damage and reverting of my changeset's should be done an admin if they are reverted. Btw, I'm also willing to fix any mistakes I made in the editing if an admin wants me to. I never said I was a perfect mapper. Another made up controversy by Stevea to deflect from his own behavior. "Yawn."

"I simply want high-quality data in our map" Like mapping fake path's to try and use as a way to say something is a park?

"It isn't personal with him" I don't know about anyone else here, but to me "he should crawl back into shatever corner from which he wriggled up from." sound's pretty personal to me. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:33, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Btw, it's also clear he's trying to set me up due to the fact that he cut and pasted the exact same message into every changeset. About really vague things that don't in anyway amount to vandalism and then said it was vandalism at the end. Without giving any specific examples or saying how exactly it's vandalism. I don't think he even actually looked through the changeset's or anything. He probably had the canned response on standby. Here's a few choice nuggets for anyone interested (I'm only going on this side thing because he did btw. I have much better things to do and I think it's majorly off topic, but whatever. That's what he does to derail things). "Boundaries don't "fit imagery," they simply "are." Especially when from authoritative sources." I'm not sure what that means and he doesn't give any context to how it applies. I guess I'm a vandal because "Boundaries don't "fit imagery,"? I don't know. There's also this "As not even the source of WHICH imagery layer/source was used (nor its offset), this amounts to needlessly replacing perfectly valid data with lower-quality, unsourced data." So, I'm a vandal because I forget to cite which imagery layer I was using? That's what I get out of it. Then he say's "Plus, as numerous residential landuse polygons were removed or affected, for no apparent reason (these are all existing objects in the real world, which were reasonably mapped)," I deleted a few residential areas that were mapped over a wooded area and re-mapped them not over the wooded area. I'm not sure what's vandalism about that. There's still residential areas where there was residential areas. Just not where there shouldn't have been. I'm not sure "affected" has to do with anything either. Things in OSM get effected by edits. It's a weird thing to complain about. Then he concludes "I believe the best course of action here is to revert the entire changeset. This strongly appears to be some flavor of vandalism." Sounds like a lot of hyperbole and unfounded accusations to me. He gives zero examples and nothing there is against the rules. So...Good luck with that Stevea. And he claims I'm the one harassing people. Setting someone up so you can make false accusations about them, in an attempt to try and get them banned, sounds pretty harassing to me. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:56, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

@Mateusz Konieczny: So more back on the subject, usually information about country specific tagging practices gets its own page instead of being on main article of tag. Like how there's country specific articles for road tagging. Is there a reason that can't be done here? Then if someone wants to read about how tags parks generally, they can look at this article or if its more specific to America, they can read the other article. That would also allow for a talk page where things related to it could actually be fairly discussed in specific details without polluting the main articles talk page. Which should be used for more general questions and discussion. Plus it would allow for details then the general article allows for. Since the topic is more nuanced then the few sentences that including it in a general article allows for. Its obvious there's a need for a wider discussion about it, along with more details that should be written. I think its only fair and functional to do it in a separate article and let the general page stay general. It wouldn't work if there was subsection on main articles for all the quarks in local tag usage. Maybe we could create a project for it or something. It's clearly something that needs to be figured out. Then we could add something more specific to the article about it or even a link to the project once it actually gets decided on. Instead of it just being an overly vague section, based on a single users opinions like it is now. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:57, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Mateusz, thank you for moving the paragraph (which remains) to a named subsection, that seems like a bulls-eye. It does work "if there was a subsection." How exasperating: the paragraph is not overly vague, it says specific things. As I have already stated, the paragraph contains provable truths, not opinions. As it actually states within itself, it will be updated and eventually deleted. There is no "pollution:" Adamant1 started this discussion, it happened, and none of it can be (nor should be) "un-said," as all of it actually was said. While we might tidy things up at times by re-organizing wiki text and perhaps judicious deletion or updating of newly-factually-wrong information, we should not re-write history or censor ourselves to provide a fig-leaf to objectionable behavior. Stevea (talk) 00:19, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

"the paragraph is not overly vague, it says specific things. As I have already stated, the paragraph contains provable truths, not opinions."

Hhhmmm, interesting. So, things that are "truths" have to be backed up by legitimate, academicish sources that have valid research behind them. I mean, if something like "American English usage of "park" as "a large area of land kept in its natural state for public recreational use" is so standard and widespread that all us American's use it, you'd think something like that could be found somewhere besides a dictionary app on Itunes. I mean, because it's what all us Americans say right? And yet, when I do a Google search for the phrase "a large area of land kept in its natural state for public recreational use" guess what comes up? Absolutely jack squat. Which seems odd, because of all of American's saying and thinking it about parks and all. I mean, I'm saying an Itunes app isn't a legitimate source of information or anything. I'm just saying it's odd that's the place where that definition of park that's so universal can be found. And really, we have no way of even knowing what the quote is about, it could be talking about national parks, or nature reserves, or deserts, or oceans, or any other number of "natural places for recreational use." Because know where in the quote does it say that it's related to parks or that it's "America's" definition of parks. So, yeah that's vague and the source is total garbage.

"the wider world should understand this tag's regional prevalence on more than "small urban manicured green spaces,"

That's also extremely vague. Why exactly should the wider world "understand" the tag's usage on in America on more then "small urban manicured green spaces"? It's cool to say so, but you don't give reason why it matters. That is vague. Anyone can assert something is important, it's extremely useless to do so without stating why though.

"this tag is thusly found also on many areas that are "national parks", "landscape parks" and similar."

I said in another comment that almost 50% of California is considered national or state parks. 89% of Nevada is. Etc etc. There's like 15 states where its over 50%. Overall, the government owned park is about 30% of the total landmass of America. Everyone can look at OSM and see not even a tiny fraction of that is tagged as leisure=park, mostly in California, and mostly in the Bay Area (I.E. Santa Cruz). So your assertion that "many" national parks are tagged as leisure=park is simply false and easily disprovable by looking at the map. Only a small amount of California is. Only one tiny spot in NV is, despite it being 89% parks and quit a lot of them mapped. So...

"As in North America it is also applied to beaches, campgrounds and other public recreation areas (which can be desert, alpine, wooded...), many of which are large and less urban."

Again, no source=your opinion. How is that a "provable truth" exactly? Prove it. Also, you say "which can be desert, alpine, wooded, etc areas. Cool, but under which conditions? Provide specific examples that aren't just you saying so (that fit with the tag description). Otherwise, your just inviting your own definition and expecting everyone to agree to it just because you say so.

"Some are tagged both leisure=park and boundary=national_park, which does not seem contradictory to many Americans.."

Cool. Which Americans exactly? How many? Again, where's your source? My guess is "many Americans" don't know jack about OSM or how we tag things. There's only like a couple hundred thousand regular editors here and I'm sure a lot of them don't care about or tag parks. If its users of OSM your talking about though, specifically so say. If not, don't use tagging lingo and cite an article or something that backs it up and say how many. Don't be vague. Otherwise it's just your opinion. If it's something like "half of the residents of California" cool, but "many people in California" doesn't really say anything. "many" could be 5%, it could be 60% or it could even be 1%. Be specific or remove it. Also, you say it does not seem contradictory. Either it is or it isn't contradictory. We aren't tagging things here based on what they might seem like. "It seems like this thing is a park. So, I'm going to tag it that way" doesn't cut it.

"so it is likely this paragraph will be deleted as USA park tagging hews more closely to the semantics of leisure=park (and other parks) defined here."

So, to summaries. Some things in America are tagged as leisure=park, due to what some people in America might or might not think about what parks are or aren't. And the tagging is slowly changing. I mean, that's pretty vague, but that's the crux of the section. It could also apply to any other tag for any other location. "people here tag this thing a certain way, because some people think about it like this, but some people. So the tags slowly changing to another tag, but who knows when it will happen or how long it take." It's an extremely useless section that essentially doesn't say anything meaningful. I'm not saying it can't, but at this point it doesn't. That's why details are important. It's really not clear what the purpose of it is or what your trying to say. That could easily change though.

"How that unfolds and how long that takes remain to be seen."

Uuummm, we're the ones coming up with the tags and mapping this stuff. Your making it sound like it's up to god or something. Maybe put some pros and cons of each current/new tagging scheme there is for these things or something. Say where each one is at. Contrast them with the usage of the leisure=park tag in America. Give a projection of how long it will take to re-tag stuff and link to a project or something that can move things forward. It's like, what are trying to sell here? What's the actual position your taking? What's your hook? Is it just to give people an information general over view of the subject (nothing in the section really talks about OSM or how OSM actually relates to any of it). Is it to give people steps they can take to improve tagging? or is it just a "this is how people in America define parks" and has nothing to do with tagging or OSM outside of you just wanting to put it in there because this discussion came up and you didn't want your park tagging to be challenged? If that's the case, it can just be a link to Wikipedia or something and then I can include a link to Wikipedia about how back yards are parks and someone else can include one about how pool halls are parks etc etc. P.S. instead of getting offended because someone has a criticism of your writing, take it as constructive feedback and ask you what you can improve. Less talking, more writing. At least I'm not just deleting it and I'm still being civil, despite your lapse and the useless personal comment in your last message (must everything be an opportunity to take useless digs at people? we're all adults here). So, research, write, cite, research more, write more, create a separate project and link to it so this can actually be discussed and dealt with, or delete it because you probably don't care outside of Santa Cruz anyway (I wouldn't blame you if you didn't. California is a mess. Let alone the rest of America. It's to big and there's to many different opinions. We'll probably never be able to come to agreement on anything related to it with people on the east coast). --Adamant1 (talk) 10:59, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Btw, Stevea, I notice your definition of how people in America uses the term "recreation" a few times and you have used it to for your definition of parks. While recreation is mentioned in the tag description, it's only one and the tag is for leisure. I thinks that's something you either ignore in your definition or put lower in priority to recreation. There should be something about leisure in the section on American tagging. We don't necessarily go to to national or state parks for leisure and it's not what they were created for like urban parks. So yes, maybe we define national parks as "places for recreation" but that doesn't mean it fits the tag. I think above I used the example of a shooting range, a sports stadium, camping, kayaking etc. So, in your section you describe how people in America define places that are for "recreational use", but that's not what the tag is mostly for. So how does your definition relate to leisure? (along with correcting the other issues). --Adamant1 (talk) 11:31, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

I am just catching up to some of the barrage of threads and accusations thrown at me above, I'll address two. First (and importantly) me using the word "recreation" in the context of leisure=park rather muddies the waters and I regret saying/doing that. There are subtle differences between how OSM means leisure vs. recreation and they are another topic for another time. Second, regarding the dictionary source I quoted: it is not "an app on iTunes." It is the built-in dictionary on an Apple Mac (running macOS Mojave) which can be accessed by the Widgets layer, the command line (Terminal Utility) at /usr/share/dict/words or via the Dictionary application, built into these desktop/laptop machines for many years. Exactly six months ago, VentureBeat reported that the number of Mac desktops/laptops around the world running macOS had surpassed the 100 million mark. Adamant1, if you can find another dictionary with 100 million copies out there, I'd love to hear about it.

OK, a third. Saying things like "serve his own purposes in Santa Cruz" and "you probably don't care outside of Santa Cruz" is not only based on untrue speculation, it is distinctly mean-spirited. Stevea (talk) 06:32, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

On recreation, fine. I appreciate that your willing to say it muddies the waters. As far as the dictionary you used goes, I don't where they get their dictionary information from, but just a lot of people use it doesn't mean it's accurate or a good source. Do you know where they get their definitions from? I still find it odd that a basic Google search wouldn't have the same or similar definition. I also question the validity of going by a dictionary definition in the first place. Things are way more nuanced then a single sentence can provide for. Plus, how dictionaries define things really has no bearing on OSM. For instance, the Oxford Dictionary defines parks as "A large enclosed area of land used to accommodate wild animals in captivity,", whereas dictionary.com says a park is "an enclosed area or a stadium used for sports", and Websters defines them as "an area designed for a specified type of use (such as industrial, commercial, or residential use)." None of those would work in OSM. It's four different definitions based on what dictionary your using. Simply looking through dictionaries until you find a definition that suites you is sort of self selection bias. I'm not saying that's what you did, but it's clear dictionaries don't agree on what a park is and that if we went by that we could easily change the definition based on what our personal preferences are. Why should Apples dictionary be the one to use? How many are out there don't really matter. What's click through rate of Dictionary.com or merriam-webster.com? The bible is the most printed book in the world. So should we start using that and make the map square with four corners because it says so and "numbers"?

My bad for thinking it was an iTunes app though. iTunes came up when I did a search for it on Google. So that's what I went with.

"Saying things like "serve his own purposes in Santa Cruz" and "you probably don't care outside of Santa Cruz" is not only based on untrue speculation" I'm not sure what's speculation about that. You specifically joined the beach discussion due to editing issues we had with each in Santa Cruz and you gave specific examples in Santa Cruz related to it that you told me multiple times to look at. There's nothing wrong with that. We join discussions and get involved in things that relate to us. In no is it mean-spirited to suggest it either. That's also not to say you wouldn't care about things related to parks in general, just that in the context of the specific discussion we were having that's why you joined it, because we were having in Santa Cruz about it. It's why I posted it. I probably wouldn't have started the discussion otherwise. But I can see where my comment might have been a little dismissive of your opinions based on the Santa Cruz thing. I was actually already thinking I probably shouldn't have brought it up in the first place. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:32, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Adamant1, for the greater good of OSM and my own continuing positive mental health, I will be unable to continue with what I distinctly recognize as "crazy making" behavior on your part. I have (valiantly?) engaged with you, tried to go No Contact, took our interactivity up to the limit of getting both of us blocked by the DWG and have a sort of weird apprehension about being public saying all of these things, but it seems it has to be this way. I choose to be unable to continue to engage with you in this project. Please do not address me personally or indirectly, as I find your advances unwelcome. Stevea (talk) 07:49, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Good. Actually do it this time. 99% of the interactions we had, you initiated anyway. So, id be supper happy if you just decided not to anymore. It would pretty easily solve whatever communication issues there might be. I have zero reason to contact you about anything anyway and I didn't from the beginning. So Buh-bye. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:10, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.