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

[Nick Whitelegg]

On Saturday 03 Nov 2007 15:05, 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 think the thing is that 'highway=footway' on its own ought to imply 
permissive, because there are large number of footways (particularly urban) 
where you don't know its right of way status. Therefore it would be better to 
make the default permissive, and add the extra foot=yes if you *know* it's a 
right of way.

Nick