[Talk-us] Adopt-a-highway representation in OSM

[Toby Murray]

The amenity tag is way too overloaded to the point where it is pretty
useless. It might as well be "thing" instead of amenity. Do not use it
for new things. Why not just make a new tag like
"adopt_a_highway=<name of organization>" - it only requires one tag to
encode to encode the information and is much more obvious.

I would agree with Serge that things like the survey date should be
put on a changeset tag. I'm not quite as sold on the source=* tag on
objects being completely deprecated though. I still use them
occasionally although I do try to avoid them.

Toby


On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 7:33 PM,  <dies38061 at mypacks.net> wrote:
> Thanks for your comments, Serge.  I'm confused by your reference to changeset metadata as that is not easily accessible to future editors of the same ways.  It would put informative content remove from the editing process.
>
> I've made reply comments in-line below.
>
> --ceyockey
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>>From: Serge Wroclawski <emacsen at gmail.com>
>>Sent: Jan 1, 2013 7:54 PM
>>To: dies38061 at mypacks.net
>>Cc: osm talk us <talk-us at openstreetmap.org>
>>Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Adopt-a-highway representation in OSM
>>
>>On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 7:32 PM,  <dies38061 at mypacks.net> wrote:
>>> I am interested in what tagging you would suggest to indicate that a stretch of road has been "adopted" as part of an Adopt-a-Highway program.
>>
>>> My thinking right now would be to include at the way level these additional tags:
>>>
>>> ...amenity      {Adopt-a-Highway}
>>> ...operator:amenity     {Air Liquide}
>>> ...source:amenity       {survey}
>>> ...source:amenity:date  {2013-01-01}
>>> ...source_ref:amenity   {roadside_sign}
>>
>>The source:amenity tag should be a source tag on the changeset. The
>>changeset also records the time of changeset, so there's no need for
>>that source:amenity:date.
>
> source:amenity:date refers to the date on which the survey was done, which just happens to coincide with the date of entering the data.  The survey could just as easily have been done 6 months ago, in which case, the source:amenity:date might be 2012-06-01, for example.
>
>>I don't know what this source_ref:amenity means, but from the context,
>>it seems part of your description of sourcing, which should be part of
>>the changeset, which is how we handle metadata.
>
> Without association of a description of the source with the tag, there is no way for editors to know where the information came from.  They should not have to dig into the changeset metadata to find out that the amenity information came from a roadside sign.  For one of the ways, we're at Edit #4.  Say we get to Edit #20 and someone wants to find out where the amenity information came from; it would be a major sifting activity through changesets to uncover that information.
>
>>As for "amenity", I don't think that fits. You may want to talk to the
>>tagging list about tagging systems for this.
>
> Amenity as in the adopt-a-highway outcome is a cleaner roadway.
>
>>- Serge