[Tagging] include smoothness=* in JOSM presets?

Simon Poole simon at poole.ch
Sun Aug 31 11:03:59 UTC 2014


A last try at illustrating the insanity of the smoothness definitions.

Switzerland has an extensive network of signposted inline skating
routes, including the world longest single route at something around
400km (see http://skating.waymarkedtrails.org/en/ ). For readers that
have never used inline skates, conventional (small wheel) inline skates
are likely the means of transport which is most difficult to use on bad
road surfaces so "smoothness" could be an important criteria if a route
is usable or not.

Given that every part of say route 3 (the 400km one), which BTW only
requires a medium level of skating competence, has been many many times
used by 100s of skaters, according to the wiki definition of smoothness
every segment of the route should be tagged with smoothness=excellent.

In reality the range of surfaces on the route range from very bumpy with
some gravel to OK. If you want to use the illustrations on the wiki as a
guide: from excellent to intermediate. In the end as a consequence the
wiki definition classifies essentially all paved roads as
smoothness=excellent

Now as said: inline skates are likely the method of transport that is
most sensitive to road surfaces and as such wont collapse the smoothness
scale as much as methods of transport that are not quite so sensitive.

So lets have a look at a racing bike with skinny tires, lets say 20mm.
Even with my mediocre bike handling skills riding on anything from
excellent to horrible (again using the illustrations as a guideline) is
not a problem, that doesn't imply that you actually have to like it*.

So that collapses the smoothness scale to: excellent (all paved roads),
good (paved and unpaved roads bits that are actually not usable by
inline skates), very_horrible and impassable.

Really really not useful.

Simon

* it is just one of the things that happens if you decide to follow an
unmapped road in OSM.

Am 31.08.2014 11:50, schrieb Janko Mihelić:
> The tag smoothness is vague and subjective only if we define it as such.
> Values "excellent" and "bad" can be treated as placeholders, and we can
> define them on the wiki as anything we like and then expect mappers to
> use them according to that definition, and not solely by that one string.
> 
> If you ask me, the table at this url:
> 
> http://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Key:smoothness#Smoothness
> 
> defines each value pretty good. Let's put those definitions in Josm, iD
> already has them, and we can finally start treating smoothness as a
> somewhat precise and well defined tag.
> 
> Janko
> 
> 
> 
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