[Talk-us] Caliparks re-tagging paths?

[Andy Townsend]

On 24/03/2016 12:50, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 03/24/2016 11:26 AM, Marc Gemis wrote:
>> They tagged them as "social_path", according to their blog entry [1]
> Thank you for the link. This is what I feared.
>
> highway=social_path is certainly unacceptable - a self-made tag that
> essentially deletes the data for all other consumers.
...
> To make matters worse, it seems that the issue has been pointed out
> almost half a year ago, and has not led to the issue being fixed:
>
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/34599982
>
> It is obvious to me that all occurrences of highway=social_path need to
> be replaced with whatever they were before. I'd normally say let's give
> them some time to come up with a better idea but seeing that the problem
> has been highlighted to them pretty much at the time they made the edits
> 5 months ago, and they haven't come up with a better idea, I'd say the
> time is up now.
>

Agreed.  I don't always agree with Gerd's somewhat doctrinaire approach 
to tagging, but he's spot on here.

It's an excellent advertisement for why people locally should monitor 
local changes - that way they'll get picked up way before 5 months have 
elapsed.  That does happen in lots of places in the US (such as to the 
east in places in Nevada and Arizona) but obviously not here.

However, people creating "unofficial trails", and adding trails based on 
GPS data that in reality doesn't match any kind of path on the ground is 
a real problem, and there does need to be a way for people managing 
these areas to deal with it.  Thankfully, there are a few options:

1) The first (already mentioned, and which is actually already in the 
tagging of https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/284562871 ) is to use 
"access=no" if something really isn't legally accessible, but the 
physical path exists on the ground.  Similarly "bicycle=no" or 
"horse=no" might be needed on things that are only foot trails. Having 
something in the database with "access=no" is better than deleting it or 
setting a made-up highway tag because someone is less likely to come 
along later and "correct" the data.

2) Another thing to consider is "trail_visibility".  That might be 
really useful where something _almost_ exists (a legal trail that isn't 
well-maintained, say).  There are lots of other tags that might be 
useful here too - surface, sac_scale, tracktype, maybe even smoothness.  
Having lots of properly descriptive data in OSM means that people that 
are preparing maps for different purposes can create maps based on their 
target customers easily - do they want to highlight "official" trails?  
Trails for horseriders?  People on inline skates?  People that can't 
climb over stiles?  etc.

3) Consider adding "official" routes to local hiking, biking or 
horseriding relations so that they'll show up on e.g. 
http://hiking.waymarkedtrails.org/#?map=11!37.9361!-122.5436 .

4) Make it clear what the source of a particular edit is.  This is 
mentioned just for completeness, as here 
https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/34599982 makes it very clear 
what the source of the changes in that changeset were.  This one isn't 
particularly helpful to mapmakers but it is to future mappers - it 
allows them to understand perhaps why something is mapped as it is.

5) Finally, if an trail has been added in error (perhaps following one 
Strava user who got lost), and there's really nothing on the ground, it 
does make perfect sense to delete it.  The only caveat is if you're 
worried that someone might add it back based on e.g. old aerial imagery 
or an old GPS trace - what I've sometimes done in those situations is 
left the way without a highway tag in but with a note on it saying that 
it used to exist, but I've surveyed recently and it doesn't any more.  
That will hopefully prevent it being added back in error.

Best Regards,

Andy (SomeoneElse)

PS  Although it was a while ago, I have walked some of the trails here 
and elsewhere in Marin county.  It's a beautiful part of the world, 
really not very far from SF / Berkeley and far less busy than any of the 
nearby "tourist trap" destinations such as Muir Woods. It's highly 
recommended for a visit.