OpenStreetMap
What the hell is soccer ? And why should we tag football field in Europe "soccer" ? Football has always been football, Fussball, Futbal... I refuse to call it soccer only because of some stup.d americans who call their game in which they carry the ball (which isn't even ball shaped!) in their hands football.
Discussion
Comment from EdLoach on 24 September 2010 at 15:05
Hi. While I also have a dislike for the word soccer, it isn't all down to the Americans in this case. There is a discussion here:
osm.wiki/Proposed_features/football
about the reasoning behind it, which makes sense (to me) after reading it.
Comment from flaimo on 24 September 2010 at 15:15
i think that football is better choise. only because the US and australia use "soccer", doesn't mean that everyone else on this planet has to change the term because of them. what's next? using miles and cups for measuring only because they use it, while the rest of world uses the metric system?
i'm for "football" (soccer), "american_football" and "rugby".
Comment from Pink Duck on 24 September 2010 at 15:56
Soccer and football are shortened terms for Association Football, so rather than use a tag that's specific to US/Australia (but it is distinct in meaning) I opt for sport=association_football, which is a similar name format to the other options. It's up to the renderers to apply a suitable graphic for that tag. Soccer may be shorter, but the rest of the world calls it football.
Comment from Xoff on 24 September 2010 at 16:11
It is called "soccer" in OSM simply because it is the least ambiguous name for the game. Football on the other hand is quite ambiguous depending on where you are (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football, it is not just American Football). So, for clarity it makes sense to use the term "soccer" in the database because it is less likely to be misunderstood.
After all the tag names and values are just internal names. On a map you can render whatever name you want. A good internal name should be understood in the same way by as many people as possible.