[Talk-us] Update on potential highway classification reform

[Frederik Ramm]

Brian,

this is probably clear to you but I want to be extra sure.

Your previous attempts at "tagging harmoniztation" in other areas - I am 
thinking mainly of riverbanks here - have occasionally met with 
criticism because they were perceived as essentially "Brian and few of 
his friends coming up with something and then making everyone believe 
that theirs is the new standard". People have unwittingly started to 
push trough your "new standard" in areas where they did not have the 
buy-in from local community, finding themselves (unexpectedly) in hot water.

Therefore I applaud your detailed documentation and your reaching out to 
this mailing list, but - appealing to everyone involved here! - this can 
only be a beginning. Please always keep in mind that you cannot change 
the road classification system for a whole US state just because three 
people on Slack gave it a nod; you will need get broad community buy-in 
*especially* if you plan to organise massive changes to the existing 
system. Thousands of mappers in the US have gotten used to the current 
system and they will need to be brought on board with whatever changes 
are planned.

This is not something where the organisers can shift responsibility onto 
the individual mapper in a "uh, we only set up the task manager, it is 
individual mappers who grabbed a region and followed our instructions" 
kind of way.

I appreciate that your wiki pages are very carefully worded at present, 
so I am probably preaching to the choir here; I assume that you know 
full well about the diligence required in such operations!

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"