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

[Jo]

Andy Allan wrote:
> On Dec 18, 2007 1:06 PM, Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping at web.de> wrote:
>
>   
>> 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
>>     
>
> Oh shut up, seriously. I don't appreciate FUD.
>
> How on earth is the tagging UK specific?
> National Cycle Network
> Regional Cycle Network
> Local Cycle Network
>
> I carefully made sure that every tag I added was completely generic.
> They are so generic the problem is people trying to work out how they
> apply to the UK (i.e. what consitutes a "UK regional network"). And
> funnily enough, it's used around the world in different countries and
> nobody who is actually using them has said they are UK centric.
>
> The reason it's taken off in the UK so much is that we have a few
> extremely dedicated cycle route mappers who have done the vast
> majority of the routes. Just read the user diaries to see some of them
> in action. If there's nobody in a given country interested in doing
> the mapping, voting on the tags is hardly going to make them appear.
>
> Don't use the cycle tagging as a strawman argument to "prove" that
> voting is the only way things can work. Argue your case on its merits.
>
> Andy
>   
I'm a newbie here. Just arrived a month or two ago. When I saw the map 
features where being voted upon, I thought: nice, everybody has a voice 
here. Once agreement has been found, everybody can start using the tags. 
Good system. The reason why I'm willing to spend a fair bit of my time 
on this project, is because I [hope/want to believe] it will one day be 
useful. Not only to draw maps (both general and for very specific 
purposes), but also for routing and many other purposes that I can't 
imagine right now. Maybe comparing how many fuel stations each country 
has per square kilometer or how the brands of fuel distributors are 
distributed in the different countries. Good thing most of them are 
tagged with a consistent tagging system. I'd prefer to see this for all 
amenities, shops, POIs, etc.

This is only going to happen if we keep it structured though. 
Bureaucracy to reach this goal is not bad in and of itself. Bureaucracy 
is only bad when its only purpose has become to keep itself going.

I don't really care what tags I'm using, as long as I know that what I'm 
using is the same thing the guy next door and the guy on the other side 
of the planet is using. So voting on them seems useful to me. We're not 
voting because we like to vote so much, but because we want this project 
to be as useful as possible.

Here in Belgium, we don't have an ncn or an rcn, but then it's a very 
small country. I guess we could just use rcn all over the place and 
forget ncn and lcn exist. I must admit that I had started to believe 
that this way of tagging cycle routes was very UK specific. That it was 
the way it's done in the UK. Just like Ulf seems to be believing.

Polyglot