[PATCH] Drop the "Riverbank" template

[pch14@…]

When I F3-search for "Flussbett", I get a "waterway=riverbank" tagged. That tag is under siege. A mapper from the US East Coast only recently called out the local community to share concerns, if it was alright to convert all of those items to "natural=water". I looked around, and found, that indeed, most "riverbanks" are in fact "shingle riverbeds", probably even "beach", in the strict OSM sense.

Summing up all the evidence, I think, it might be time to retire "riverbank". Don't you think too? It is just too ambiguous. On OSM-Carto riverbanks render like lakes, and Carto developers spend quite some time deciding on such particulars.

[skyper]

See also #20591.

[ottwiz]

Yes, I definitely support the idea, since this tagging scheme is just simply ambiguous. iD has already dropped it and uses the newer natural=river for river areas if I'm right.

[Dimitar155 <osm.dimitar155@…>]

Ottwiz is right, iD dropped it a few years ago and it's currently using natural=water + water=river for river areas. I also support this change.

[pch14@…]

Actually, use of the riverbanks tag in the wild is not so clear-cut as portrayed sometimes, eg. here, ​https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Waterways/River_modernization - where Step 6 recommends swapping one for the other, with very incomplete upfront checking. In my local area, most "riverbanks" mapped the shingle besides streams, the "stream bed" so to say. Neither is there a river, nor water, except for some weeks in summer, when snow melts, or occasionally after heavy rains. OSM Carto shows a 30m wide river, where the actual flow rate can be measured in single digit bathtubs per minute most of the time.

Just witnessed the other day, that such "dry riverbanks" (a.k.a river bed, stream bed) still get mapped, even though all the world "knows", that this is not the "actual use" of the tag, so I think there is no way to save the tag. Yet, the combination natural=water+ water=river is not a drop-in replacement. At a loss for a concise term right now for the water area of rivers/streams, that does not include the "beaches". But I think, people that map streams as an area do not need a template ;) So just drop it!

[zelonewolf@…]

I support this also. Yes, there has been a concerted effort to drop waterway=riverbank in favor of natural=water + water=river, a combination that is available in the existing JOSM water template. The riverbank preset is currently at the same menu level as the water preset, so a mapper looking to tag a river area will encounter "Riverbank" before finding "river" in the "water" menu.

The deprecation of waterway=riverbank is supported by the approved ​2011 water details proposal and has been deprecated by iD since 2019 -- the editor prompts users to "upgrade tagging" when waterway=riverbank features are selected.

It would be incomplete to not mention the ongoing ​River modernization project, which has seen mappers from all over the world collaborate on improving river tagging. Of note is the ​references list of that project, which link to the many, many local community forums and mailing lists where river area tagging has been discussed, with strong global support for the newer tagging style.

[pch14@…]

@zelonewolf I do not want to know how many "beaches" have been set under water by the concerted efforts of the project and also by the iD editor validator. I do not know either, if I should smile or cry, but I know: If there is a concise template available in JOSM, all the more reason to just get rid of the riverbank one.

[zelonewolf@…]

I have definitely encountered what you're describing in the wild - an area tagged waterway=riverbank but placed on a sandy area along the bank of the river. However, these have been "under water" for over a decade since both taggings render this as a water feature in every major renderer regardless of which tagging is used.

I have found this case to be quite rare in areas I've worked on. I would guess that most mappers figure out pretty quickly that the tag is used for water-covered areas based on how it renders.

If there is an area where these "underwater beaches" were commonly mapped, you could download an overpass query of river areas, and then use the JOSM Ctrl+F find function to search for river areas of a small area size, which would be an easy way to find such cases.

[zelonewolf@…]

Remove riverbank preset

[skyper]

The wiki page ​Tag:waterway=riverbank does still show the status "in use" and needs some major rework if the tag is deprecated.
Instead of simply removing the preset, I'd prefer a proper deprecation including a validator warning and a change in the default style to render the tag differently.

[pch14@…]

Well, if it cant be dropped, at least not soon, my main complaint is the ambiguity in the German translation, which continuously leads to wrong mappings of shingle as riverbank, because "Flussbett" means riverbed. C.f. ​https://translations.launchpad.net/josm/trunk/+pots/josm/de/+translate?search=flussbett

I guess I have to change riverbank over there: "Wasserfläche von großen Flüssen (Strömen)" should match the Wiki definition ;)

[stoecker]

Sounds sane, but I'd suggest to shorten it to "Wasserfläche (Ströme)".

[zelonewolf@…]

More comprehensive riverbank patch

[zelonewolf@…]

Just pinging to make sure this patch doesn't get lost.

[taylor.smock]

stoecker just updated i18n, so this is blocked behind the next release.

[taylor.smock]

In 18519/josm:

Fix #21630: Drop the "Riverbank" template (patch by zelonewolf)

TagInfo(1) shows that usage of waterway=riverbank has cratered over
the past year. As of writing, the total number of objects with
waterway=riverbank is less than 5,000 objects, and due to the significant
drop in usage, can be considered to be deprecated instead of
in use.

(1) ​taginfo:tags/waterway=riverbank#chronology

[taylor.smock]

In 18579/josm:

Move waterway_riverbank.svg to nodist, see #21630 (r18519) and #22451.