[OSM-talk] Advanced highway tagging

[Jeffrey Martin]

On Nov 24, 2007 9:07 AM, Jeffrey Martin <dogshed at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
> http://bowlad.com
>

OK, I'm not sure what the exact solution is, but here
is what I think.

First, I really think there should be a tag that just says
what the road looks like at first glance for the reasons
stated on the wiki page for the highway tag. (It doesn't
have to be the highway tag if we want to change that.)

There should be tags for all the other attributes that
people want to render with.
Some of the ones I've seen mentioned are legal classification,
legal rights, importance to local travel, importance to commerce,
preferred routing, practical speed.

If those who want to render on some of these other bits of
information will collect that data then hopefully the people
in charge of the rendering rules can render on that other
data.

I know that people can put in whatever kind of tag they want,
but we must avoid tags that directly indicate rendering.
That's a data best practice regardless of the country.

-- 
http://bowlad.com