[Talk-GB] "designated" and "permissive" confuse new people

[Jon Pennycook]

As if to prove my point, a new person has, on their first changeset, marked
an existing gate on a footway as "motor_vehicle=permissive" (these are
gates to allow pedestrians and dismounted cyclists to cross a railway
line).  They were using iD.  I think the developers of iD need to place
more emphasis on getting new people to understand what the different access
tags mean, particularly to persuade people that "designated" and
"permissive" don't mean "no"/"private".

On Sat, 2 Oct 2021 at 18:10, Jon Pennycook <jpennycook at bcs.org.uk> wrote:

> I have noticed over the years that new people don't always understand what
> permissive and designated mean in access tags. Permissive seems to mean
> private or no or with a permit, and designated seems to mean no or
> destination or with a permit or at certain times only.
>
> I think people don't know about the wiki or don't want to use it (it's
> huge and probably difficult to know what to look for), so the onus is
> probably on developers of editors. What can be done to encourage new people
> to use access tags correctly? Or maybe just to use
> yes/no/destination/private until they have found the wiki?
>
> On a related note, I wonder how we can persuade new people not to
> explicitly list all the things that might possibly be forbidden on a
> path/footway - access=destination/ foot=yes/ motor_vehicle=no/ horse=no on
> an ordinary urban footway seems over the top (as well as confusing).
>
> Jon
>
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