[talk-au] Aus tagging guidelines on highway surface tags

[Sebastian S.]

+1 from me too.

I would go even further and explicitly encourage local, on ground tagging to use the more detailed tags such as gravel or asphalt over paved/unpaved.
I have been updating these tags locally using Street complete as I consider it better data.

The rewording gives me confidence that this is not reverted.

Great Initiative. 
Cheers, Seb


On 1 February 2021 12:26:00 pm AEDT, Andrew Harvey <andrew.harvey4 at gmail.com> wrote:
>On Sun, 31 Jan 2021 at 15:16, Little Maps <mapslittle at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi folks, wondering if I can promote some discussion about the
>section of
>> the Aus tagging guidelines on adding surface tags on roads. The text
>> currently reads,
>>
>> “For most types of highway=* tags you don't need to specify the
>> surface=paved key/value pair as this is assumed, however make sure
>you tag
>> the road surface when it isn't a paved road.”
>>
>> This assumption is fine in large cities but is problematic in rural
>and
>> regional Australia. Can I suggest that it is replaced by something
>like the
>> following...
>>
>> "Surface tags should be added to roads wherever possible, especially
>in
>> regional areas. This advice differs from that on the international
>> key:surface wiki page, which states that, 'there is normally an
>assumption
>> that the surface is surface=paved unless otherwise stated.' However
>this
>> assumption is not valid across regional Australia as: (1) most roads,
>> including many major roads, are unpaved, and (2) mapping intensity
>varies
>> greatly among regions. Many roads that do not have a surface tag may
>not
>> have been examined by mappers. Adding a surface tag will assist data
>users
>> and help mappers to further refine the regional road network."
>>
>
>+1 from me. I believe there has been a shift in community sentiment
>regarding this, the current wording reflects sentiment from a few years
>back where you'd generally only map surface=unpaved and assume
>everything
>else is paved. However especially with the Microsoft mappers adding
>many
>surface=paved tags and with StreetComplete surface quest asking for
>surface
>type for all roads, this has led to it being much more common for an
>explicit surface tag to be acceptable. It's fitting to update the wiki
>to
>say that it's now commonplace to always add a surface tag even when
>it's
>paved to provide more complete data and higher confidence in the data.
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