[Talk-us] Fwd: USBRS WikiProject seeks volunteer mappers

[stevea]

Martijn van Exel writes:
>No more of this please. I'd place this thread under moderation if I
>could, but since Ian is on vacation, I will have to rely on you all to
>do the right thing and take this wholly inappropriate mode of
>discussion offline.

I appreciate and accept your excellent advice, Martijn! 
Concomitantly, I have answered Serge off-list (where I did my utmost 
to keep my "mode" appropriate).

Simon Poole writes:
>@stevea you would substantially help your cause if the route data was
>available for inspection, best a public source from where it could be
>obtained.

Simon, I couldn't agree more -- but Minh's post beat me to it! 
(Thank you, Minh).  If you look at the Established U.S. Bicycle 
Routes list on the Adventure Cycling page
http://www.adventurecycling.org/routes-and-maps/us-bicycle-route-system/use-a-us-bike-route
you will find links to all the state DOT web sites or other official 
maps of USBRs.  This section will expand as the newly approved routes 
are posted on state web pages.  I think it can be well argued that 
together with these state web sites, OSM does indeed have an 
authoritative source.

Are USBRs always signed?  No, especially the brand-new ones, but they 
often ARE signed on the longer-established routes.  Perhaps we do 
well to posit that USBRs in OSM are an "edge case" of 
on-the-ground-verifiability, as this is not always universally true. 
(I am not strictly agreeing to this, I just think it might be a 
helpful discussion topic which can offer some light, rather than 
heat).  However, USBRs ARE always verifiable, just not always 
on-the-ground.  This makes them essentially identical to boundaries, 
which are also in our map.  So, we might call boundaries an "edge 
case," too.

The suggestion that each route be FURTHER vetted by an OSM volunteer 
actually bicycling it is excellent.  Is this absolutely required? 
No, I don't think so, but I do characterize that as an excellent 
suggestion, and say "Thank you" for that.

We discuss, we learn, we share, we improve.  Right?

SteveA
California