[Tagging] default value for "oneway"

[Peter Wendorff]

Hi Xavier,
"no" is the "default" value of the oneway tag as it's the most correct
assumption.
First as in general most roads are not oneway roads (considering any
road inside and outside of cities), and second as the other case around
would be even worse:
If "yes, this is a oneway street" would be assumed, you still wouldn't
know which direction the traffic is allowed.
You may add oneway=no to streets where you know they are not oneway, but
you have to define the oneway tag to define the traffic direction, else
there's still missing data on oneways.

But as the base assumption of all applications I'm aware of is that
streets is oneway=no, this is usually not necessary.

If in some areas, where most highways are oneways, this leads to the
default being less used than the "non-default", this isn't bad either as
the oneway tag is necessary to get complete information.

regards
Peter

Am 28.08.2014 um 14:20 schrieb Xavier Noria:
> Hi,
> 
> The default value for "oneway" is "no" for most types of roads. That
> is, if the attribute has no value set, "no" is assumed. Which is the
> rationale for that default?
> 
> In the European cities and towns I know the majority of streets are
> one-way. For example Barcelona, or Madrid, or Paris. In such areas,
> are contributors expected to annotate "no"s rather than leaving the
> tag blank?
> 
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