[Tagging] hiking route from= and to= tags

[Peter Elderson]

Mateusz Konieczny:

> Value in from and in to are not necessarily the closest named object to
> terminal locations, therefore adding them has some value as deriving
> them automatically is not feasible.
>
> Even if deriving them automatically was possible then adding redundant
> tag is preferable if that discourages adding fake descriptive name tags
>

True. Loads of people put descriptive elements in the name, because the
name is what you see in applications. Telling people not to do that because
<valid OSM reasons> will not work, because <valid usability reasons>.  What
may work is supporting a better method. If we agree upon and document a
better method, people have no valid reason anymore to (ab)use the name tag.

If the data in some of the tags can be derived from the start and end
location, and if start and end location can be determined by the
application software, and if proper names are available for those
locations, that could be the better method, but I am afraid this is not yet
the case.
Many applications calculate the length of a route and display that for the
user. That is why I do not use the distance tag for route relations. Still,
many route names contain the distance, e.g. because there are two city
trails with the same name, only one has an extra loop adding a few
kilometers.

>From and to I do use for many routes I maintain, and after a trial period I
have started to remove these data elements from the names. Most of the from
and to location names are assigned by the operator and cannot be determined
easily and with certainty from the geolocation.
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