[OSM-talk] Argh! - Wholesale deletion of foot|horse=yes tags

[Andy Street]

On Fri, 2007-11-02 at 17:20 +0000, Nick Whitelegg wrote:
> Just noticed that in a very large area (about 10x10 miles) to the 
> northeast of Southampton, the foot/horse=yes tags have been removed from a 
> large number of footpaths and bridleways. Result is that Freemap is 
> showing them magenta (permissive) rather than red (official).
> 
> Sorry to be picky but if this was intentional, please leave them in :-) 
> They're essential to distinguish between official and unofficial rights of 
> way.

Yes, I noticed this too. I contacted the user concerned via the OSM
website earlier in the week who informed me that they had removed the
tags because footways were implied foot=yes (and likewise for
bridleways) and therefore redundant.

My understanding of the ROW tags has always been that if a tag is absent
that we have no knowledge of the access permissions and the end user of
the data should use a default which is sensible for their application.
Is this correct? How do other mappers interpret these tags?

Regards,

Andy Street