[Tagging] Reviving the path discussion - the increasing, importance of trails in OSM

[Volker Schmidt]

On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 16:54, Tod Fitch <tod at fitchfamily.org> wrote:

> My translation of these two statements combined is roughy: “We can’t
> change any tagging”. I don’t find that helpful.
>

I fear your translation is correct.

At least for tags as heavily used as highway=path and highway=track.
Deprecating anything is nearly impossible due to the immense amount of work
involved.
You cannot undo old tagging, you have to carry it with you and any new
tagging you introduce is making life even more complicated, because you
have to support both old and new.
Maybe due to my way of inserting data, often along cycle routes or recorded
GPX tracks  (and Mapillary photos) I encounter so many cases were JOSM
reminds me of deprecated tagging in the data I downloaded, but data that I
have not touched at all. I keep ignoring these messages because I have no
knowledge of the situation on the ground, but the sheer number of these
warning messages is indicating that this approach of introducing new
tagging and then leaving to others the task of updating the old tagging, is
basically wrong.
If we feel that we need to introduce additional tagging you may consider
this, but changing existing tagging (or re-defining existing tagging, which
amounts to the same thing) is near to impossible.
In this specific discussion we may have an underlying problem (or advantage
?): In my part of the world quite a lot of minor highways (tracks, paths,
cycleways, footways) is already mapped (I would assume that in Germany this
even more the case), so any tag or wiki changes would cause a lot of work.
If you are in an area where the minor viability is still less well covered
in OSM, you may consider local tagging definitions which differ from the
ones used in other parts of the world, and try to control who is tagging in
"your" area (would be difficult here as we have many visiting mappers form
the northern side of the Alps)

I recently created a cycling map of my city. Bicycle tagging has already
gone through several major redefinitions of tagging and I had to take into
account all the different generations of tagging people have applied here.
And that is a local map and also it left out the surface (paved vs
unpaved). I know what we are talking about - don't repeat those mistakes.




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