<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 14/03/2016 08:58, Gerd Petermann
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:HE1PR08MB0764050F0DFCB2135B39AC599E880@HE1PR08MB0764.eurprd08.prod.outlook.com"
type="cite">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<style type="text/css" style="display:none;"><!-- P {margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;} --></style>
<div id="divtagdefaultwrapper"
style="font-size:12pt;color:#000000;background-color:#FFFFFF;font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<p>Hi all,<br>
</p>
<p>I hoped that this problem was solved whe iD was corrected,
but <br>
</p>
<p>some less often used editors still allow to create these
erroneous tags.</p>
<p>Since iD was corrected the only changesets with these errors
are created <br>
</p>
<p>by Merkaartor and Potlatch 2. Fortunately these editors are
rather rarely used.<br>
</p>
<p>I hope the programmers of these editors are also working on a
fix ?</p>
<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
I think perhaps that we need to to a step back here. You seem to be
equating "valid" data with "correct" data, when in reality if
something is "invalid" it's usually a very good indication that
further survey is required, and if it's been made "valid" by someone
picking a key/value combination that "the original user might have
meant", there's no guarantee it's correct.<br>
<br>
For example, on
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1057585745/history">https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1057585745/history</a> you've changed
the obviously invalid "footway=sigtnpost" to "information=guidepost;
tourism=information".<br>
<br>
What you've changed it to is "valid", but not necessarily correct;
it might instead be an "information=route_marker", or it might be a
bridleway marker suggesting that one or both of
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/5037727">https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/5037727</a> and
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/167425506">https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/167425506</a> should actually be
"designation=public_bridleway" and have "foot=yes", "horse=yes" and
perhaps "bicycle=yes" tags on them.<br>
<br>
Now that you've "fixed" the data there there's no longer something
that's "obviously invalid" that people can see and say "I wonder
what that is supposed to be" before going out and surveying it.
Also, it's perhaps worth mentioning in passing that telling me via
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/35996416">https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/35996416</a> to "Please contact
the original mapper" has perhaps lost some politeness in the German
to English translation (as I'm sure it would the other way if I'd
tried to write it in German); it suggests that your time is far more
valuable than other mappers'.<br>
<br>
It's a similar issue with semicolon-separated values. If someone
has created (say) "sidewalk=both;right" then it's pretty easy to see
what's happened - someone has merged two ways together and not known
to check all the tags. However, imagine if instead of
"sidewalk=both" or "sidewalk=right" one of the ways hadn't got a
sidewalk tag on it at all. The result would still be incorrect, but
there's no way to easily detect it. The only way to prevent this
problem occurring is to educate mappers about tags that they might
not be aware of, and the best way to do that is to actually talk to
them, not to suggest $technical_fix to whatever editing software
they happen to be using. Editors can help, sure (for example, the
way that Potlatch 2 highlights semicolon-separated values is one way
of dealing with it) but ultimately a human needs to answer the
question "why did that just happen" in order to prevent new and
not-so-new mappers making the same mistake again.<br>
<br>
Best Regards,<br>
<br>
Andy (SomeoneElse)<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>