[OSM-newbies] New country tagging help

[Claudius Henrichs]

Am 24.03.2009 11:58, 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".

Don't stick to the documentation on the wiki too hard, especially when 
it comes to numbers (city always more than 100.000 inhabitants) or set 
characteristics (surface of trunk road has to be tarmac, two lanes + 
exits lanes, etc.) as these only fit in a very small region of the world 
called Europe and some of the United States of America. Rather set up 
reasonable rules for you region. As Georgetown being Guyana's capital 
has ~130.000 inhabitants this could be a good meter for scaling the 
place-tagging for example. If "village 49" has only 10 houses it might 
still qualify for a guyanese (is that the adjective?) place=village. 
More important than the raw numbers are the infrastructural 
installations found there (a shop, a place to find a bed, etc.) and the 
importance of that place to it's surroundings.

I've seen you've started a wikiproject page on Guyana already. Keep it up!
Regards,
Claudius