[Talk-GB] traffic island mapping / harmful detail? - landuse features and highways

[Neil Matthews]

I've had this issue myself -- where another mapper started to delete 
what I considered to be carefully surveyed islands -- where I had split 
the road due to the presence of a physical obstruction.

I was convinced that following 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Editing_Standards_and_Conventions#Divided_highways 
and 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Editing_Standards_and_Conventions#Topology 
was not incorrect -- and maybe also considering 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:crossing:island and 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:crossing

In the end I tried to reach a compromise that anything of about a car 
length or so might be mapped as a node -- to be honest I think they went 
off mapping other random areas in the UK.

Part of the problem is that the wiki is "tag-based" rather than "what 
options are available to map this feature"-based. So the highway=island 

tag page doesn't mention that it might be acceptable to map a road with 
a split (and maybe something island-based too). I did try and add some 
cross-references in the wiki, they may still be there.

As regards "harmful edits" -- I think that's not great terminology. I've 
settled on "tweak" for most minor edits now -- rather than "fix" or 
"correct" -- as I think it's got better connotations.

Best regards,
Neil