[Talk-us] Clarke County, Mississippi, county road signs and OSM name tags

[Kevin Kenny]

I realize that my last couple of messages were sent from the wrong
return address and didn't go to the list. Oops. Apologies to anyone
who's getting this twice.

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018, 11:24 Jack Burke <burkejf3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> While some counties just attach a number to a pole (e.g., many counties in Georgia), there are some that put up signs saying "CR 123" (Jasper County, Mississippi) for unnamed county roads.  However, Clarke County, Mississippi signs (with shiny new green-signs-on-a-stick) county roads as "Clarke Co. 123".  What are everyone's thoughts on how to name these roads in OSM for Clarke County?  We can just leave the name field blank and use ref=CR 123, we can do the ref tag and also include name=County Road 123, or we can do ref=CR 123 and name=Clarke County 123.  Or even ref=CR 123, name=Clarke County 123, alt_name=County Road 123.  Or swap the name= and alt_name= values.

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 2:35 PM Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org> wrote:
> Just ref=CR 123.  The name should not be redundant to the ref, so if it's signed as Clark Co. 123 and that's it, then add noname=yes as well.  The name is only the name, name is not ref.

I could go either way with what you put as the name on a way. In
localities where "County Road 1400W" is a typical street name, and the
county roads have blade signs or none at all, it makes sense to give
it as the name. (Although what you put in the name should match
whatever is on the signage).

But please, do road routes as relations.  That is, for Clarke County
Road 123, please create a relation:

type=route
route=road
network=US:MS:Clarke
ref=123

with the ways of County Road 123 being members of the relation.

Not having numbered routes as relations makes people who do shield
rendering code tear their hair out, because concurrencies are really
problematic any other way.