[Talk-us] Spot elevations collected as natural=peak and name=Point (height in feet)

Fri Mar 8 15:57:12 UTC 2019

If it’s locally known as such, to my mind, it’s totally fine tagging it that way, even if it’s only by backcountry skiers. I would say this is common in OSM, I see (and appreciate) a lot of named trails that are not always signposted as such but locally known by those names (like https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/624949038 <https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/624949038>). Local knowledge trumps most everything in OSM.

If it’s just a shortcut to have the main OSM map display elevation in feet, that’s not right, but it indicates a need that is currently unaddressed: displaying elevation in local units on the main map. I don’t see a ticket currently on the osm-carto repo that addresses this. I think it would be hard to get ’regional’ rendering preferences accepted however. A better / other way to improve on this is to change the convention for the ele tag to be more like maxspeed: default to meters but allow other units to be entered as ‘8801 ft’ for a value. Then osm-carto could pick that up more easily.

Martijn

> On Mar 8, 2019, at 6:27 AM, Kevin Broderick <ktb at kevinbroderick.com> wrote:
> 
> To elaborate on my previous response, now that I'm back at a computer:
> 
> Would https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4992960980 <https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4992960980> be an example of (or very similar to) what you're talking about?
> 
> I've been told that one is a local reference point ("25 Short", ie. 25 feet short of 10k), and at least one article (https://rootsrated.com/stories/a-quick-and-dirty-guide-to-the-best-backcountry-skiing-in-jackson-hole <https://rootsrated.com/stories/a-quick-and-dirty-guide-to-the-best-backcountry-skiing-in-jackson-hole>) backs that up. The old USGS quad does have a point elevation of 9975' on that knob, but it looks to more properly be a shoulder of a larger mountain, not a proper mountain on its own.
> 
> I'm not suggesting that the current tagging is correct, but in this case (and I believe in some others, although I don't even have anecdotes to back that up), point elevation marks on USGS maps have become the "names" for local topographical features. They're a little wonky on the on-the-ground-verifiability (you can easily verify that a height-of-land exists there, but I don't know that there's a sign or survey marker indicating "this is 9975" or "this is 25 Short"), but [some] locals who travel in the vicinity will use the reference. So it seems like something that may be very reasonable to map, but I don't know what the best tagging scheme is. I do think that normalizing to meters loses the meaning in the current tag-for-the-renderer scheme, because a '3040m' label isn't going to translate well to '25 Short' or '9975' unless you happen to particularly good at math.
> 
> On Fri, Mar 8, 2019 at 4:53 AM Dave Swarthout <daveswarthout at gmail.com <mailto:daveswarthout at gmail.com>> wrote:
> This is simply a way to get an otherwise unnamed peak to render and also, I suspect, to sidestep the inconvenience of converting the elevation to meters.  AFAIK, there are no peaks with the generic name "Point" on any USGS Topos. In addition, placing the elevation into the name is another trick that should be discouraged.
> 
> On Fri, Mar 8, 2019 at 2:38 PM Mateusz Konieczny <matkoniecz at tutanota.com <mailto:matkoniecz at tutanota.com>> wrote:
> If it is a peak then ele=XXX and noname=yes would be OK.
> 
> If it is not a peak it should not be present at all - otherwise it opens way to importing
> LIDAR data into OSM (and there are datasets with resolution of 5 cm, dumping it
> into OSM would be case of unverifiable data making it impossible to edit).
> 
> I opened https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/1703462 <https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/1703462> to reduce chance that it will be discussed 
> and forgotten.
> 
> If this is really used name - then it would be OK but my bet is that this is not an actually used name.
> 
> Mar 7, 2019, 7:04 PM by miketho16 at gmail.com <mailto:miketho16 at gmail.com>:
> It seems that there are a couple of mappers in Colorado US (at least, perhaps mapping in other areas as well) who are adding spot elevations (presumably from USGS Topo maps) to OSM tagging them as 
> natural=peak
> name=Point (elevation in feet)
> 
> For example:
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4601119717 <https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4601119717>
> 
> What does the community think about this?
> 
> natural=peak might be ok if said spot elevation is really a local high point (some are not).  The name I am less sure of. If this belongs on the map at all, it should probably have an ele tag, with value in meters.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-us mailing list
> Talk-us at openstreetmap.org <mailto:Talk-us at openstreetmap.org>
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us <https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us>
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dave Swarthout
> Homer, Alaska
> Chiang Mai, Thailand
> Travel Blog at http://dswarthout.blogspot.com <http://dswarthout.blogspot.com/>_______________________________________________
> Talk-us mailing list
> Talk-us at openstreetmap.org <mailto:Talk-us at openstreetmap.org>
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us <https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us>
> 
> 
> -- 
> Kevin Broderick
> ktb at kevinbroderick.com <mailto:ktb at kevinbroderick.com>_______________________________________________
> Talk-us mailing list
> Talk-us at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/attachments/20190308/5a3e0a82/attachment-0001.html>