[Tagging] Tagging type of ownership of a road

[stevea]

One thing I'll reiterate:  sometimes (as I have among me / us / locally), a political entity (say, my municipality) owns "open space reserve" or "watershed district lands" or "future proto-park" or "otherwise uncharacterized lands owned by the public" or a lot of otherwise hard-to-characterize-to-everybody so they understand it fully, lands.  The whole human aspect of whether one might "walk upon them" or "have them be available to use as a future highway corridor" or a million other imaginable things is ridiculously complex and varies widely in the minds of many smart and thoughtful mappers.  Sometimes what is now private becomes public at a future date, perhaps these are reversed.  There may be complex leases, ownerships, private contracts (imagine a land trust that offers a lease to the current farmers, then it becomes protected open space lands for perpetuity...).  Cultural differences at how we delineate / denote these can be difficult, but we do well with owner=* and operator=*.  Keep those (each of them) well-defined, and we're OK.  Note that it can help to take them together, yes.  Affirm that when one is missing, the other should not be assumed to be anything, check.

Tag these carefully with much discussion.  These categories and tags can be difficult, though if you can work them out locally (we seem to do OK where I am), they can be worked out for everybody, too.  If they need more discussion, hey, discuss them.

Be careful, everyone.  As long as we're careful and don't make assumptions, we're on the smarter, safer side.