Proposal talk:Shrubbery/Archive 1

Current use

For informational purposes:

There seems to be some ground-roots support for this proposed tag already (19 by me as a vote of confidence, but before that from three other individual users). Neat. --JeroenHoek (talk) 17:04, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes Jeroen, there is, very very very small, and that was what the first phase of the discussion was all about. This is already covered and used widely under natural=scrubs. Yet, many acknowledged that their could be a need to distinguish them in a separate tag and are willing even to support it. --Bert Araali (talk) 19:18, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm afraid you've misunderstood my comment above. It was just a matter-of-factly observation that the tag suggested by Cartographer10 was already in use, despite being only a fresh proposal (I joined this proposal soon after that comment to help edit the text and assist Cartographer10 at his request). I've taken the liberty of removing the massive table you posted: I don't think it is relevant here. We know that this tag is new and that usage starts from scratch. Again, this statement was not meant as an argument for using it. --JeroenHoek (talk) 19:09, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

It was not me who added that table Jeroen, that was kovposch, who's signature you putted under my comment ;) - no harm I changed it back. Both of you have done a good job sofar, and please, don't get disappointed. I do think it could be a good addition but their is lots of room still for improvement. Be more open to other peoples comments. Simplify definitions, but not too much. Broaden your perspective, if you want this hard work to become popular, no matter what the outcome of the voting is. --Bert Araali (talk) 19:29, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Hedges as areas

Mentioned in the proposal is the future potential of natural=shrubbery to resolve the dilemma of hedges mapped as areas via barrier=hedge with area=yes. This tagging combination was the documented convention for mapping vegetation that acts as what is generally known as 'hedge' — i.e., dense shrubbery that acts as a barrier. The rendering for these was dropped from Carto, and subsequent discussions showed that it is unlikely that barrier=* entities will ever be considered as anything but linear features by OpenStreetMap's reference rendering engine. This effectively ends barrier=hedge plus area=yes as a suitable tagging combination.

Hedges have a good deal of overlap with natural=shrubbery. They are managed by definition, and are, essentially, shrubs grown dense for both aesthetic reasons and the practical concerns of keeping people from crossing them. Thus a shower-thought that occurred to me was that what makes something 'hedgy' rather than just 'shrubby' (if you pardon the vocabulary), is the density of natural=shrubbery areas.

For a follow-up proposal, the following might be considered:

Introduce a shrubbery:density=* sub-key, that in the manner of the undocumented but similar tag wood:density=* defines the denseness of the vegetation. The idea is that natural=shrubbery with a density of, say, shrubbery:density=dense could be considered as a successor to barrier=hedge plus area=yes.

Although most general purpose routing engines should never route across natural=shrubbery (being managed vegetation that is generally not intended to be walked through, and certainly not driven over), some specialist implementations may in extreme cases route their users over shrubberies with a sparse density (although I can't really imagine the use case).

Renderers though can implement a range of shading that gets 'denser' as shrubbery:density=* increases. This would provide renderers such as Carto with handholds to determine, in a semantically valid way, the 'hedginess' of areas, and aid the user in spacial navigation by distinguishing a dense hedge from a generic medium density couple of bushes and those from a sparsely grown decorative patch. --JeroenHoek (talk) 14:52, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

I like this concept. I'd be concerned about creating another smoothness=* situation. How do you draw the line between degrees of shrubbery density? Are dense and sparse the only values for such a scheme or do you envision gradations? --ZeLonewolf (talk) 15:46, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

What is the smoothness=* situation? A lack of strict definitions? Do tell if there is some pitfall we should avoid. I am thinking of at least the three values of sparse, middle, dense; defaulting to middle. At (or above) shrubbery:density=dense you would have a valid replacement for barrier=hedge plus area=yes; at least from the point of view of the renderer and most intents and purposes. The Carto maintainers seem willing to consider alternatives as long as barrier=* remains linear. Part goal of this idea is to have something to use to retag a lot of broken area-hedges before decay sets in (i.e., mappers retagging them the natural=scrub to fix the rendering problem). --JeroenHoek (talk) 17:08, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

The vote on smoothness=* in 2008 was 21-12 (at the time, 50% approval was the standard), which would not pass under today's rules. Also, my gut feeling is that there will be resistance to approving tags with possibly subjective meaning. I still think what you're suggesting is a good idea, it will just be challenging to come up with clear enough criteria that people will feel that any two mappers can look at the same piece of shrubbery and come up with the same determination. --ZeLonewolf (talk) 17:34, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Ah I see. Well it helps that this refining of natural=shrubbery limits the semantics of that key to its own namespace, so it should hopefully prove less controversial. With decent visual documentation it shouldn't be too hard to establish a reasonable set of guidelines for picking the density. Limiting the number gradations to three might help there too. Of course, some things remain subjective, but that is true for plenty of OSM features. At some point a mapper will just have to use their best judgement. --JeroenHoek (talk) 17:51, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Linear shrubbery

I am missing an explanation why a linear shrubbery is out of question. I think in many situations this would make a lot of sense actually where the area covered is very slim, e.g., around parking lots. Since the current proposal uses the natural key (and not landuse) I don't see this particularly problematic so why would we want to restrict it? --Stefanct (talk) 00:39, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

For linear demarcations you can already use barrier=hedge. This does admittedly leave a gap for shrubs that are not quite 'hedgy', but nonetheless linear on the map. The problem with shrubs as a linear feature lies with renderers not being able to clearly distinguish between linear and area features. This is why barrier=hedge is now never rendered as an area by Carto. With natural=shrubbery as a linear feature the same problem would arise: someone would map an amenity=school, and add natural=shrubbery to indicate that there is a thin line of shrubs all around the school yard. But now Carto can't tell if it should fill the entire area with shrubs (because the linear feature is on a closed way) or just the edge.

I still don't understand what part of area=yes Carto doesn't understand... it makes exactly the required distinction. --Peter Elderson (talk) 09:07, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

It does, at least from a semantic standpoint. From what I understand it has to do with the ability to mark entities as polygons: area=yes is one way to do it, but other tags make closed ways areas too, such as amenity=school. It seems that Carto (and the other derived styles) can't (or won't) tell the difference between properly tagged area-hedges and other entities that are tagged as 'having a hedge around it'. The explanation given is that this led to rendering bugs (school grounds covered in hedge all over) and that barrier=* must be considered a linear feature in any case. There is quite some disagreement to this approach, but all attempts to resolve the issue while keeping barrier=hedge with area=yes as valid tagging have proven fruitless. Meanwhile every day that those area-hedges are rendered in a broken manner by the project's reference renderer means that well-meaning mappers may retag them to natural=scrub or simply delete them as 'bugs'… Far from an ideal situation of course, hence the approach described above as a possible alternative (whilst keeping sensible semantics). --JeroenHoek (talk) 09:27, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

To avoid this pitfall, and to allow natural=shrubbery to act as a base for clever things with shrubs, we define it as strictly an area feature. So anyone combining something like amenity=school and natural=shrubbery would be creating a tagging error (and violate the One feature, one OSM element principle), and renderers can safely drop rendering for one of either feature.

For mappers this lack of linear applicability should not be too much of a problem I think though. Mappers can fairly trivially draw a line and extrude it in JOSM to make it an area with some thickness. Bear in mind that natural=scrub cannot be used as a linear feature either. --JeroenHoek (talk) 08:16, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Level of detail

In an area with multiple distinct shrubs/patches of shrub (e.g. separated by small bits of grass), would each patch of shrub be mapped as a separate area? This tag has been compared to both natural=scrub (which would suggest "no") and barrier=hedge + area=yes (which would suggest "yes"), so I'm a bit confused. --Tordanik 16:09, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

It depends on the level of detail you want to map. You can map every shrubs/patch area as an individual area but you can also choose to map the entire area as a whole if the grass patches in between are minor. It depends a bit, if an area has like 50% shrubbery and 50% grass and the area is of a decent size, you can map them individually. If the area has for example 80%+ shrubbery, it is acceptable to map the entire area as shrubbery. Maybe if you provide an example location I can better answer the question. --Cartographer10 (talk) 18:26, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I think the question is mostly answered, I've also discovered that there's actually more than one example image on the page (oops).

But as background: I was asking mostly from a data consumer perspective, trying to find out if this tag can be useful for my 3d rendering efforts and, if so, how to render it ("continuous greenery cut to a prism shape" vs. "area dotted with individual shrubs"). --Tordanik 17:31, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

You are not the only one so that is why we change it back to show all images at the same time. Good that most questions from you are aswered. I think from a data consumers perspective, this separate tag allows for more possibilies because you can easily split the scrublands and the decorative or maintained bushes out and do something with it. The 3d shape has the advantage that it emphazises the more decorative, managed and manicured aspect. Not all shrubbery thought are so perfectly manicured. Maybe if we introduce subtags for shrubbery, you can render it differently. --Cartographer10 (talk) 17:46, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Icing=shrubs

As has been said, it is not landuse, because there was opposition; I read, that it will be truly natural after having read the wiki page on the subject; So instead of landuse, like a flowerbed, it is natural, like a scrub. It is not called scrubs, because that is not a singluar. Though in nature, to not sound wild, it is a shrubbery, which sounds cosy in my ears, though scrub/shrubs would much closer match the feature, which is proposed to get represented, according to native speakers at least.

I fully agree on not filing this under landuse, because the features will often be in residential areas and create a landuse over another landuse, or under it? Will this ever be over/under a natural area? I see a missed chance: To provide a reliable way for consumers/renderers to select the feature, regardless what is in the same place there too, without mappers having to punch holes in multipolygon relations. Therefore I propose the new tag "icing=shrubs" --Hungerburg (talk) 23:58, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

What do you mean with "over/under a natural area"? you mean shrubbery/shrubs a groundcover for example for {tag|natural|wood}? I personally think that {tag|icing} is not going to work. First, it sounds like a candy in my opinion. Also, why introduce a new tag while we have the tag {tag|natural} for this? We only need to find the best home for shrubbery. Shrubbery was chosen in consultation with a lot of people. Shrubs is not only not preferred because is is plural (consistency reasons) but also because it can potentially be confusing between the tags {tag|natural|scrub} and {tag|natural|shrub}. Only a few letters difference. Also, shrubbery really emphasizes the decorative, maintained part. --Cartographer10 (talk) 08:13, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

I did not mean the physical conditions on the ground, but how a data consumer could make sense of overlapping features of the same type, e.g. a natural=wood and a natural=shrubbery - can they be true at the same time? Can a renderer show a blend of them? If not, which one shall be "top"?

Natural is not a tag, it is a key. Natural=scrubbery is a tag. The name Icing for a new key came to me, due to the insistance on decorativeness in the proposal. It is just a late-in-the-day idea. My thoughts went about traffic calming islands, there may be a flowerbed this year, next several years there will be ground cover shrubs there, then grasses of a rural pasture mix, then plain lawn, etc. Whatever the municipal gardeners come up with to ice the cake. The new key should be able to summarise this, and its values provide a targeted selection. It will not conflict with landuses/naturals and can always be considered "top", just like builings or roads.--Hungerburg (talk) 21:04, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Well, isn't icing than another word for the {tag|layer}? Maybe a tag like groundcover would be a good fit. About the varying vegetation, a tag like {tag|landcover|greenery} seems more appropiate then. With a sub tag like {tag|greenery} you can the further specify the vegetation. So you would the for example place shrubbery as sub tag under greenery in this example? If landcover is not what you meant, then adding another tag will make mapping more complex because beside either natural or landcover, you have to supply another tag to describe the feature. --Cartographer10 (talk) 17:34, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Sure, icing, by definition, is what is on top - Naming a key like that will be a hard sell though! Someone else (or should I write @SomeoneElse:, some native speaker, can coin a better term. In keeping the brain storming, an icing=shrubs can even be on roofs, just like an icing=moss|flowers|grass; This won't be Bushes'R'Us, we've already seen, where that does get us. The kind of plant is just of second value. The value would not be called shrubbery, because that is a distinctive term for something which has not much to do with what you are after, at lest as I can see. I have seen, you first proposed a landuse tag. All of landcover, landuse, natural are not a good fit, because these keys form bases, something, other things are layered upon. It won't compete with hedges, though some features on the ground, that are currently mapped as such might be better represented with it. It could heal the mess of landuse=flowerbed. And so on. It could help making the map more pleasant to look at :) --Hungerburg (talk) 20:35, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

So if I understand you correctly {tag|natural|shrubbery} should be dropped and a new key (icing in your example) should be created to indicated basically the topping of a piece of earth? At first, we still think that with some improvements, {tag|natural|shrubbery} can still be viable tag with lots of use cases. Maybe I don't get it correctly but I don't see the added value of {tag|icing}. A tag like {tag|natural|greenery} or {tag|landcover|greenery} is the same and more clear in my opinion. --Cartographer10 (talk) 12:30, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Never mind, I was just taken away by the decorative aspect, which occured to me as the main driver of this proposal, and thought, it would be better served by not filing under natural. BTW: In reply to my own question above, here some evidence, that scrubberies can be in woods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Who_Say_%22Ni!%22 - In the footage the scrubbery is only seen partly for a split second though.--Hungerburg (talk) 20:01, 17 March 2021 (UTC)