[OSM-talk] [Talk-GB] "Unsurfaced road" and "Byway"?

[Dave Stubbs]

> I'm not arguing against rcn or whatever, but maybe there's something
> more or less identical in france (or germany or somewhere else) and
> having the same tag internationally might help the french mapper to tag
> things on it's holiday in the UK (ok, rare case maybe) - and will very
> certainly help a developer trying to develop a mapping application
> dedicated to cyclist that should work for the whole world and not only
> in the UK ...


Well, they're being used in UK, USA, Netherlands, and Germany. Maybe
elsewhere too.


> > ncn milepost is a completely uk thing.
> >
> Are you sure?


Well unless some other country sticks random wood sculptures which
match one of 4 rather unique designs along its national cycle routes
then yes, I'm pretty sure.

We don't need to have universal schemes for everything.


> > crossing=toucan is a crossing for bikes... there was a fairly large
> > e-mail thread about them... it's the official name for that type of
> > crossing as used by the UK government so is quite useful for cyclists
> > in the UK. I'm not going over that again... google for the thread.
> >
> I remember that, but I wasn't trying to understand the tags, I was
> trying to point out what the problem with the argumentation of the
> original poster was.

Which was that we don't need to vote. That common usage should be as good.
Your counter argument was that you didn't know what crossing=toucan
meant. So I told you. Job done.


> > And again I'll point out that you're talking about discussion and
> > documentation, not voting. You seem to link one to the other far too
> > closely.
> >
> Sorry, I don't get your point here.


You seem to see discussing tagging as the same as voting on tagging.
You also seem to see documenting tagging schemes as the same as voting
on tagging. It isn't. You can have the discussion without the vote. If
I use a tagging scheme extensively and document it, why shouldn't it
go on map features?


> >> In addition we also have tracktype=grade1-5, we have surface=unpaved -
> >> did I mentioned that all this was *not* approved - and still confuses me?
> >>
> > Don't get me started on tracktype=grade1-5... grrrr... but it's an
> > interesting case because it's a tag that someone is actually using,
> > proposed, got some discussion, then got ignored when it came to voting
> > apart from 3 approvals... so someone put it in map features anyway,
> > only to be told that no, you can't do that because you need 6
> > approvals... which starts an argument about democracy and causes
> > someone else to oppose it (at this point if they had any sense they'd
> > have created 3 more wiki accounts and voila :-) ).
> >
> So your not pleased if someone *is* doing it the wiki style (and ignores
> voting) but your still argue against voting?!? Interesting argumentation ;-)

Not really -- I don't like their scheme, but I think they can use if
they want. Just don't expect me to also use it, agree with it, or
refrain from suggesting they don't use it.


> >>> And more importantly, I know that every one of the not-approved tags
> >>> is not only in use in the database, but even being rendered too (no
> >>> prizes for guessing where!
> >> So all is well now? "I got it rendered and I don't mind if anyone else
> >> has a problem with it - or don't understand it" - you mean this kind of
> >> solution?
> >>
> > Except that the cycle map has a key and a "Tagging Guide"... which or
> > may not help your understanding:
> > http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/cycle-info/
> >
> Ah, yet another "secret info" that a newbie has actually *no chance* to
> find ...

Unless they look at the cycle map, have been looking round the OSM
wiki for cycle related stuff, or happen to have actually been
introduced to OSM by the cyclemap...
And if we got to put it on map features you wouldn't need to look there.


> >>> So lets all be a little less bureaucratic when trying to exclude
> >>> things from "Map Features", or alternatively return the page to its
> >>> original use (a useful guide to what tags we use) and take the
> >>> bureaucracy elsewhere.
> >>>
> >> This sounds pretty well, until you think about actually gonna *use* the
> >> data. It's probably no fun to write a renderer for the 20000 possible
> >> variations of 200 tag's (not to mention that it's ugly, hard to
> >> understand, error prone, and slower to work with) - as a result for not
> >> doing some proposal work "at the beginning".
> >>
> > No, it's about going out and actually doing something then figuring it
> > out afterwards.
> >
> Fine, exactly what I'm doing. I'm lazy and I only start a new proposal
> if I already had this "new thing" a few times after going out - so after
> I got some experience. And to my recognition, other proposers usually
> start with "I have these ... here and I want to tag them ...", so the
> proposal doesn't come out of "thin air" ...

That's cool then.

> > I know some people have a hard time getting their heads round that
> > one, but the truth is it doesn't end up with 20000 variations because
> > people want to be able to use their stuff, so they figure out how
> > things need to be done to work.
> If you would take a deeper look at the data, you would know that it
> exactly *does* end up with 20000 variations for things not in the map
> features.

What you're telling me here is that if you don't advertise what tags
to use, people will use different tags all over the place. I know
that. But seriously, that has /nothing/ to do with voting for tags. It
has to do with advertising your tags.


> [snip]
> What's the reason that the gravitystorm cycle map more or less ends at
> the borders of the UK ???

All written in English?
There's about 2 guys who've pretty much mapped everything you see by themselves?

> There are no cycle routes outside of the UK? - probably not!
> There's no one interested in cycle routes outside of the UK? - probably not!
> The cycle route specific tags are so UK specific, that they won't fit
> well outside of the UK? - probably Bingo!

Now you're just being rude and stupid.

>
> Maybe a proposal done at the beginning of the cycle related tagging
> would have end up with a much wider acceptance of the currently very UK
> specific tags - even with no real disadvantages for the UK mappers. But
> now we have lot's of cycle routes tagged UK specific, so changing this
> to be more international is probably near to impossible. Mappers outside
> of the UK might be refrained from entering cycle routes to the data
> because they don't find a tag in map features that fits well. And we
> cannot change the map features to be more internationally because we
> already have so much UK specific tags out there. Adding another cycle
> related tag might also be a bad idea - you'd got a UK vs. the rest of
> the world tagging. Catch 22.

So national, regional, local is now a specific UK thing... damn. Well
nice to know we have a monopoly on coarse grained classifications.

Dave