[OSM-talk-be] Regional walking networks

[Ben Laenen]

On Tuesday 11 October 2011 16:49:00 Gerard Vanderveken wrote:
> We want to tag for the people and for usabillity.
>
> The current reasoning is flawed.
> 
> -The route between 2 points in a network has no name, so we do not tag a
> name in OSM.

Congratulations. Now if only we can end the discussion here...

> -People can't work well with unnamed objects, so we give the route a
> name by using start point number - end point number

I must be some kind of superhuman apparently since I was able to map these 
routes for years using Potlatch 1?

> -Since the route has no name, we can't use the name  tag  and so we put
> the name in the note tag.

It's a note helping editors to describe what the relation actually is. The 
note has always been there to help fellow mappers and yourself later to get a 
bit more information on the object.


> A purist point of view is made, which is then compromised in the wrong
> way and this leads to these discussions over and over again.
> Do simply what is needed and have this name where it belongs. In the
> name tag.
> This will be the end of this ever recurring discussion.


And if you start using the name tag, you'll find that you have to write 
exceptions for everything using the data since it suddenly has routes with a 
name which it shouldn't present as its name. See what happens with the Lonvia 
map. And there is no simple way to solve this, you'll have to sort it out 
manually.


> If it is purity that has to come first, then we should have no note tag
> as well and those note tags should be deleted?

Why is the note tag not appropriate for this usecase?

If your only issue is helping with the editing of data, invent some other tag 
(mapper_and_editor_friendly_description=* or whatever) and try to get support 
for that in the editors.

Suppose you have some exotic object you want to tag and there's no way to map 
it yet, would you also put its description in the name tag? (Bad example 
perhaps, as some actually do this.)


It's not a name, and for some reason you agree that it's not a name, yet you 
still want to tag it as a name. (*)


(*) where "it" is some predefined arbitrary description which follows some 
rules on the wiki which would also be subject to some discussion: should we 
use abbreviations? Should it include what kind of network it is? What language 
should it be in?

The fact that you have to invent a name first is reason enough for me to not 
tag it as such.


> We are lucky that JOSM supports this note tag, otherwise there was no
> way of managing those networks in a decent way.
> (Maybe a feature request to 'unsupport' this tag in JOSM is in order?)
> 
> With the note tag as it is now, we can also not differentiate the routes
> from the different networks, because eg 12-34 can be part of a walking
> or biking network.
> The current practice is from the time that only one
> node network existed.  Now that ways or regions can be part of several
> networks,  an update is needed.

There are other tags in the relation, you know. And who says that the note tag 
can only have these numbers, write whatever you want in it, there's no agreed 
form for the note tag. As long as it somehow helps you and other people later 
to understand what the object is.

And for that matter, "Scheldeland 12-13" also won't tell you if it's a bicycle 
route or a walking route.

Greetings
Ben