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

[Mateusz Konieczny]

May 21, 2020, 13:18 by westis at gmail.com:

>>> Obviously we're not tagging for the renderer and the default OSM rendering is discussed elsewhere.
>>>
>> Then why you mention it?
>>
>
> I was trying to give a context. Sorry if it's not relevant everywhere. My point is that the usage of highway=path for forest and mountain trails has increased and more and more data consumers are using OSM data for that purpose. But the difficulties that @Ture Pålsson very well described is a reason as good as any to discuss better ways of tagging "paths".
>
> Even if we should not tag for the renderer, we should always make the data easy to consume. Otherwise the data is quite meaningless. And highway=path definitely isn't easy to consume, which was > very well pointed out already 6.5 years ago <https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Richard/diary/20333>>  by Richard Fairhurst of > cycle.travel <http://cycle.travel>>  and also at > https://www.cyclestreets.net/help/journey/osmconversion/>  ("Horridly complex tag, everyone uses it differently.").
>
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Richard/diary/20333 - thanks, I remembered it but
failed to track it down. I now added it to the wiki to
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dpath#Data_consumers


>> There was plenty of discussion, if someone is interested then improving and expanding
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dpath
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Path_controversy
>> is likely a good idea.
>>
>
> Like Frederik mentioned, the wiki is a terribly difficult place for discussions. In lack of better channels, this tagging mailing list is the best forum I've found for these discussions, before putting conclusions (and possibly opposing views) in the wiki.
>
I feel that there was plenty of discussion, just nobody bothered to write summary of them anywhere.

>  
>
>> Or using StreetComplete Android app in your area, among included quests there 
>> is one asking about surface for paths where it is missing (if you are interested in just this,
>> you can change quest order in settings)
>>
>
> Yeah, StreetComplete is great! I've been thinking of suggesting to add other important tags for paths/tracks as well, like trail visibility and mtb:scale. But I haven't had the time to understand how that process is done. :)
>
See https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete/wiki/Adding-new-Quests-to-StreetComplete
and https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete/issues/new?template=quest-suggestion.md
(second one available via "new issue" button at GH)

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