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

[Mike Collinson]

At 04:05 PM 3/11/2007, Andy Street wrote:
>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?

I agree with your interpretation.  

As Andy Allan points out, it looks as though here a mapper has assumed that foot=yes relates to physical practicality rather than legal status.  Even if that were true, I cannot see any point in removing the hard work of others when there is no tangible benefit.

Personally, I'd like to see Map Features evolve a set of agreed defaults as they would help folks downstream of mappers, for example writing render rules, and help mappers be consistent. An example, in a different area: highway=unclassified could default to surface=paved.

Slightly at a tangent, I've been using bicycle=ridable on footways here that are clearly ridable and ridden whether or not legal status is known or, urm, accommodating.  foot=footable should be a new value may be ? :-)

Mike
Stockholm