[Tagging] Deprecate ref=* on ways

[Paul Johnson]

On Mon, Jun 2, 2025 at 7:07 AM Greg Troxel <gdt at lexort.com> wrote:

> António Madeira via Tagging <tagging at openstreetmap.org> writes:
>
> > What I meant is that even if that "ref=49" is wrongly associated to
>
> It does seem like someone is adding incorrect refs based on a
> misunderstanding, and it would be good to have that resolved.  People
> with strong opinions doing wrong things and the db ending up that way is
> an unfortunate part of OSM, but comes with the good parts of evolving
> tagging.
>

It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to start formally deprecating ref=* on
ways.  Ref to describe routes on ways violates the "one object, one OSM
entity guideline," and is one of the reasons relations were created as a
primitive in OSM in the first place.  If the ref=* on ways dinosaur was
allowed to die the death it should have 15 years ago.
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