[OSM-newbies] New country tagging help

[Donald Campbell II]

I'm a little confused how to go about tagging things here in Guyana. I've
been here about two months and seem to be the only person here actively
mapping. Have done a bit of traveling and I have a pretty good idea of what
things are like all over so now maybe you guys can clear up some questions I
have.

Okay like highway tags for example.  There's nothing in the whole country
that is large enough to fit a  motorway tag.  The roads between major cities
are usually still one lane in each direction and rarely divided.  Often a
major road is a single lane with barely enough room to pass when you meet
traffic in the other direction. Sometimes you have to back up a while to
find a spot you can pass each other at.  Highway secondary would be the
biggest tag I could use here.

So does the tag specify the purpose or the physical reality of the road?

Also cities, towns, villages, etc...  here it's common for every block of 5
to 10 streets to have it's own village name.  In the Capital city Georgetown
there's a few dozen smaller named areas that are listed on the busses and
used commonly for directions. ie: 44 bus Georgetown to Kitty /
Campbellville.

Outside the major cities and along the coastal route many of the villages
simply get a number.  Village 49 or whatever.  Maybe those will only have a
dozen houses along their only road, which is also the main road between
other larger cities.  So technically none of those are large enough to
warrant the village tag if it's defined by the number of residents as the
wiki seems to explain.  They more closely map Suburbs which are smaller
named areas inside an existing city.

If I tag them villages, it matches the local vocabulary but is technically
incorrect, calling them suburbs would make them render correctly but also be
wrong since they are often independent along the main road.  We also don't
want to "tag for the renderer".

I don't know.  :-)  I'm having a hard time deciding on really ANY tags.  Can
anyone help me out with some sort of strategy for doing this? What's
customary for doing a new country?  Do I need to find some sort of
government survey map and see how they classify things? What do you do when
"town" means something different than the established guidelines?

Thanks,
-DC.
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