[Talk-us] Mountain Letters

[Val Kartchner]

On Tue, 2010-12-14 at 01:35 -0700, Samat K Jain wrote:
> On Monday, December 13, 2010 05:10:04 pm Val Kartchner wrote:
> > This had been done as a footway.  This is the
> > wrong way to do it, but what is the right way?
> 
> Have you been up there? It may not be technically wrong—there may be paths alongside each of the letter's segments used for maintaining the letter. I know of at least 3 letters locally to me (Socorro NM; Las Cruces, NM; El Paso, TX), and all have such footpaths.

I haven't been to this particular letter at N41 53.84 W111 50.77.
Looking at in using Google Earth, it appears to be concrete.  So one
could say that it is a footway since it is like other footways.

I Have been to others including the "M" for Morgan High School at N41
1.69 W111 39.53 (concrete), and the "U" for the city of Uinta at N41
8.67 W111 53.96 (rocks painted white).  Neither one would be footways,
though there are paths that go to them.

> So there's my +1 for using footways to draw out these letters on OSM. This assumes such pathways exist, and falls apart for more anthropogenic signs (e.g. Alan's CASINO example).
> 
> Some kind of tagging to indicate mountain letters is a good idea. They're difficult-to-miss navigational aides, and it makes sense to place them on maps. Important information to include is who maintains the letter, and/or association (I suppose operator= would work for that).
> 
> Samat

Of those who have responded (us three), we are all in agreement that
they should be rendered.  How should it be tagged?  How should it be
rendered?  I think that these "mountain letters" should be tagged
differently than signs like the HOLLYWOOD sign.  I liked the idea of
"type=sign", but that should be a secondary tag.

This does bring up another thing, should we find some way to tag the
locations of billboards?

- Val -