[OSM-talk] Misclassified roads

[Steve Hill]

Following the approval of the highway=road tag, I've set about 
aggressively changing a lot of the highway=unclassified roads around 
Swansea, that I believe are misclassified, to highway=road, with the 
intention that they can then be surveyed and reclassified correctly.

However, after starting to do this, I've realised just how many of the 
roads are misclassified - I'd estimate that well over 80% of the roads 
tagged as highway=unclassified are, infact, not unclassified roads.  So 
I'm wondering about the merits of changing *all* the 
highway=unclassified roads in the area to highway=road so that the whole 
lot can be classified appropriately from scratch.  This would make it 
obvious which roads really are unclassified and which need to be checked.

What are peoples' views on this?  I imagine that much of the OSM world is 
affected in the same way, and this renders the highway=unclassified tag 
relatively meaningless in it's current state.  Should there be a global 
reclassification to fix this, or is there a better way?

  - Steve
    xmpp:steve at nexusuk.org   sip:steve at nexusuk.org   http://www.nexusuk.org/

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence