[Tagging] Road classification

[John Willis]

Javbw

> On Sep 3, 2015, at 12:17 AM, Daniel Koć <daniel at koć.pl> wrote:
> 
> It also means that real importance could be tagged one day instead of "official" importance, so we have at least something proper once people will have what they really want anyway. =}

Rant:

I agree that importance is very important. But not everyone agrees. 

I mentioned "importance" on the -carto github page (rendering mountain icons based on a tagged "importance" score or something), and gravitystorm informed me that it is unmappable because it is unverifiable, linking to a "verifiable knowledge" page on the wiki. 

It is verifiable. It just that it is not documented in a neat tidy way. 

We can't even separate hills from mountains because they are all "peaks" for some reason. 

I mean, a 30m tall hill called "fujiyama" (there are hundred or more little "Mt fuji" hills and mountains throughout Japan) and the iconic Mt Fuji have the same name, characters (富士山), icon, and rendering in OSM. This particular name issue famously led some Chinese tourists to my small town looking to climb Mt Fuji, and they arrived at"base of mt fuji" train station (fujiyamashita) - which is below a hill that takes 5 minutes to walk up. It is a national joke. Google Uses it in ads to show off Android. 

It obviously is known and documented that this hill is less important. But making one icon render at z8 and one render at z15 is not allowed, because it is "unverifiable". ><

 OSM is stuffed full of value judgements - but the ones that could improve renderings on tiny, large, and iconic non-manmade items the most is not allowed. 

Labeling Denali or the Grand Canyon or Mt Everest or other natural landmarks *correctly* requires a value judgement by someone. Every online map does this. Someone put the special "mt fuji" icon in Apple Maps for a reason. Ot is an internationally famous peak. 

It requires prioritizing their rendering over other mountains, and their own sub-peaks. And cluttering the map with peak icons that appear and disappear all at the same zoom level gives no idea as to the size, visibility, cultural importance, nor landmark status of the peaks and other natural features. 

I purchased a USA map that won a national mapping contest - this 1 guy spent years choosing features to include and exclude - highest points, POIs, and historic features - his map beat out NatGeo and other maps in the contest. It is beautiful. 

Capturing local / regional information on what should and shouldn't be shown at certain zoom levels - importance - makes a better map.

Ignoring it seems to be the exact opposite of OSM's mission to capture local knowledge to make a superior map. 

Javbw