[talk-au] Tagging Outback Australia

[Roy Wallace]

> I am leaving for a 5 month trip through parts of outback Australia in a few weeks and I want to add to OSM as much additional detail as I reasonably can.

Sounds great :)

> should the elements be shown as separate nodes and individually tagged or as multiple tags to a single node.

In my opinion, if these "elements" (be they tent sites, fuel pumps,
cabins, or whatever) occupy different space on the surface of the
globe, it's much better to add them each as separate nodes/areas. This
is more accurate (and it also looks better when rendered). The only
time you actually *need* to use "multiple tags on a single node" is
when you're describing multiple "aspects" of a single physical feature
(e.g. that a restaurant sells food of a certain cuisine=* and has
certain opening_hours=*).

Of course, if you don't have the time or energy to map everything
separately, whacking them all in as tags on a single feature is better
than nothing...

> Also some highways and major roads are tagged but the names are not rendering so are not appearing on the map download that I have in MapSource or that I load into my GPS. The tagging looks different to that shown in Potlatch examples in the Wiki so I wonder if that is the reason. I am reluctant to change them until I understand the system a bit better, but bringing highway information up to date is one thing that I want to achieve during this trip.

Perhaps you could give an example of a particular highway or road that
seems to have this problem?