[Tagging] The concept of "audience" (commuter, tourist...) in bicycle routing/neworks

[stevea]

Thank you, Frederik:  all input is welcome in a "concept discussion!"

This made me think before I typed here, Frederik, as I’m sure my suggestion of considering “audience” for a tag did for you, too.

Corollary from Frederik’s post (that I, at least) understand from it:  sometimes “intention” (of whatever might be in the real world, like a sign) is NOT clear, is not explicitly stated, or is not anything that we wish to (or are able to) put into a map.  That may or may not be exactly accurate in the case of these bicycle signs and how we might denote them in OSM, but that is what one person (from Germany) suggests (here and now).

Part of what this might result in doing is “steering away” the author(s?) like JochenB from talking about the “purpose” of the network (what I meant to highlight along one dimension by introducing “audience”) and “steering towards” something more explicit.  I don’t know what that is, but we have one example of this “design exercise” resulting in “hm, maybe we don’t want OSM to be recommending something so explicitly as a ‘route recommendation' with (in, by) its data.”  Let the data “express WHAT IS in the real world” (plainly and clearly), let things like routers and renderers do the “recommending.”  (By the method that they route, or highlight “this” or “that” in their display of segments / ways, as renderers do).

JochenB, honestly, I have nothing against you personally and want to see this (poorly expressed so far) concept of ‘basic_network’ succeed in OSM if it should succeed and can succeed.  But the signs, what they mean, what they do and how we might tag them to specify all of this continues to need development before we agree on exactly how we might or will tag them.  Otherwise, we’re “skipping too much.”  Like wide understanding (and consensus).

> On Dec 6, 2021, at 1:18 AM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On 12/6/21 02:43, stevea wrote:
>> One concept I'll toss out is "audience."  (Maybe bicycling_audience).  Once it's clear to me (and others) whether we're talking about a "collection of ways," (distinct from a route?), a route, routes, a network or networks (that is not yet clear to me), syntax might be fashioned for "this."  It might be :audience bolted onto network, it might be simply key:audience=* or bicycling_audience=*, with initial sensible values of [commuter, tourist].  I mean if that "relatively new concept not already well-articulated" actually tags for what you mean, well, we're onto something.
> 
> If I may offer a word of caution here - let's take care not to get carried away into mapping "recommendations". It is our job to map the facts, and the routing engine's to use these facts to generate recommendations for various audiences. It is not our job to come up with recommendations ("why, this bicycle superhighway is probably more aimed at commuters so let's invent a tag for this").
> 
> In the cycling department we're already prone to deviating from our standard "map what's on the ground" mode (by marking infrastructure as being part of some cycling network even if the only evidence of that is a map published by a cycling association, and not actual signage).
> 
> Let's just keep that in mind. Mapping anything that is not clearly visible on the ground will always require a very good reason.