[OSM-talk] Advanced highway tagging

[Jeffrey Martin]

I made some posts about this topic a few months ago. I haven't been
very active lately, but back then I did some editing of the highway tag
page in the wiki. The discussion seemed to suggest that the highway
tag should be used to describe how the road looked. If it looks like
a bridleway then you make highway=bridleway even if it is not a
legal bridleway. If it looks like motorway then you label it as a motorway
even if is legally a state highway.

Of course we could decide to change the meaning of the highway tag.
It's been a few months. I suppose if I check the wiki now someone
may have done that.

Of course what particular tag we use for which kind of data is not
really the issue.

Here's the real problem. People put in incorrect data to make
the renderer display things the way they want them to look
instead of changing the rendering rules.

For example there is a single lane gravel road connecting
two towns. It's very important. You want to see it on all
zoom levels. Simple, label it as a motorway.

I call this lying and it is bad. Very, very, very, bad.

I'm not exactly sure what the solution is though.

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