[OSM-newbies] Highway=stile vs Barrier=stile

[Bob Jonkman]

On 2 Jan 2009 at 21:22, Dave Stubbs wrote:

>The tag was always highway=stile. There's thousands in existence. It
>works perfectly well. There was a wiki discussion where barriers were
>thought about and the people on that discussion decided to rename
>stiles as barrier=stile to make it more consistent. There's no
>compulsion for anybody to agree with this, and also there's no reason
>we can't use both.


Isn't a stile the two-sided ladder that goes over a fence? If so, a stile isn't a barrier, it 
establishes a way over a barrier, eg. a continuation of a footpath.  So, my choice would be for 

  highway=stile
  layer=1


Sadly, I think that horse has left the barn[*]:

 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Approved_features/barriers

 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dstile

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Proposed_features/barriers#Fords:_really_a_barrier.3F

There are a couple of stiles in my neighbourhood; unfortunately I didn't think to note them 
when I was mapping there.


--Bob.


[*]: "That horse has left the barn" is a colloquialism for "That discussion is over" (for the 
non-native-English speakers on the list)