[talk-au] Deletion of walking tracks/paths

[Andrew Harvey]

On Mon, 24 Jan 2022 at 16:12, nwastra nwastra <nwastra at gmail.com> wrote:

> For info and with some regard to recent discussion of US Trails Working
> Group…
>
> I noticed a lot of paths being deleted by this user as requested by a
> National Park Ranger.
>
> I commented with some suggestions and received the following reply in
> comments...
>
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/116520175
>
> https://nrenner.github.io/achavi/?changeset=116519029
> https://nrenner.github.io/achavi/?changeset=116520175


Good spotting.

I am inclined to leave to others to consider.
> I would rather they be left in the OSM and tagged in a different way for
> various reasons



> but I expect we have little choice but to accept the NPWS decision.
>

Quite the opposite, NPWS has little choice but to accept the OpenStreetMap
community's decision (of which they are now a part). I hope they can feel
welcome here and participate, OSM has a lot to offer NPWS and likewise OSM
has a lot to gain from NPWS.

On Mon, 24 Jan 2022 at 16:27, Graeme Fitzpatrick <graemefitz1 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I would have thought that may have been better being sent to DWG for
> action, rather than a bloke from NPWS signing up an account to just go in &
> delete stuff?
>
> Andrew?
>

DWG gets a lot of requests like that, from landholders who say OSM shows
tracks on their private property and asks us to remove them. DWG will
usually follow through and improve the tagging like access=* once we have
enough information to go by, but my personal preference is always to
encourage them to join OSM and make the changes themselves, reserving DWG
for disputes, blocks or complicated reverts.

In this case if the mapped paths really were imaginary and didn't exist on
the ground then deleting them from OSM directly would be very helpful,
though in this case it looks like the paths do exist so rather it's a
tagging question.

On Mon, 24 Jan 2022 at 16:55, <forster at ozonline.com.au> wrote:

> Hi Nev
>
> I am encouraged by Guy's response. If Parks NSW can be persuaded to
> funnel all/most such map changes through one person like Guy it could
> be good.
>
> Invite him to join talk-au so he can understand why illegal tracks are
> such a difficult problem for Parks and OSM.
>

This would be the best case scenario.


> Eventually it would be good to get the tracks undeleted and modified
> with a lifecycle prefix but the discussion is more important at this
> stage than the outcome.
>

I agree. Especially for those with recent edits where someone recently
surveyed, even if the track was closed at most it would be one of the
stages of decay
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Lifecycle_prefix#Stages_of_decay and
access=no.

On Mon, 24 Jan 2022 at 17:26, Phil Wyatt <phil at wyatt-family.com> wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> I agree that a good discussion is useful but at the same time the OSM
> community needs to understand what a hassle it can be to have these tracks
> in OSM and having no, or little, control on how any other app/web interface
> may show them.
>

I think the US trails working group approach is good. Better documentation
of the different scenarios will help both mappers accurately tag the ground
situation and data consumers to improve their products.


> I actually favour deletion as well but understand that is not the 'OSM way
> of doing things'. A full discussion may help the agency, and OSM
> contributors understand the issues on both sides.
>
> I also think it would be useful for others to join in the US trails group
> so
> that a more international perspective can be applied to this issue. The
> situation can be very different across countries (especially legally).
>
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