[Talk-GB] National Trust Paths organised edit page

[Mark Goodge]

On 02/09/2019 14:30, Jez Nicholson wrote:
> Following on from their talk at the OSMUK AGM, the National Trust have 
> now created an official 'organised edit' page for their footpath project 
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing/Activities/National_Trust_Paths

I'm a little puzzled by one of the lines on the permissions grid on that 
page. There's a line for "Legal RoW but access discouraged", with a 
suggested tagging of "discouraged/private" for pedestrians (and similar 
tags for other users).

Quite apart from the fact that "private" is simply wrong for any public 
right of way, the use of "discouraged" for pedestrian users seems to me 
to also conflict with the wiki, which suggests that this is a functional 
tag (the wiki example is HGV traffic on narrow roads). But public rights 
of way come in all shapes and sizes, from broad, well-maintained paths 
to barely visible routes across difficult terrain. If we want to tag 
their relative ease of use, then surely a more appropriate tag than 
"discouraged" should be used. If a right of way on foot exists, then it 
is, ultimately, up to the user whether they use it or not.

The reason why I'm uneasy with this here, is that it relates to similar 
concerns already expressed by Frederik Ramm. There's quite a lot of NT 
property which is crossed by public rights of way, but that the NT would 
prefer people not to use as they provide a route onto the property that 
bypasses the "official" entrance. I can understand why they'd want to do 
that, but I don't think it's appropriate to reflect that in how the 
paths are mapped in OSM.

Mark