[OSM-talk] Misclassified roads

[Steve Hill]

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, Richard Fairhurst wrote:

> And that's fine: you seem to place more of an emphasis on the Gospel
> According To Map Features than I do

If you don't go by the definitions in Map Features, what definitions do 
you go by?  As far as you are concerned, what is the difference between an 
unclassified and a tertiary?  If we don't have some agreed definition, the 
tags become meaningless since the meaning will vary widely depending on 
who surveyed the road.

For example, if someone is writing a route planner for HGVs, it is wise to 
have it try and avoid unclassified roads as they are defined by the wiki. 
But it is not sensible to avoid a high quality dual carriageway (which 
seems to match some other people's definitions of an unclassified road).

> What _isn't_ fine is going round removing others' work because you
> disagree with it.

Ok, so maybe I shouldn't have changed the classification of some of these 
roads until I had resurveyed them.  I certainly don't consider it to be 
"removing someone's work" though - the way is still on the map.  All I'm 
trying to do is standardise the tags a bit so they match the _only_ 
documented definition.

> As for C, that's pretty much immaterial: I've spoken at a public
> inquiry to get a landowner to remove an obstruction on a C "road". I
> say "road", actually it was a foot-wide path from one village to
> another three miles away.

That was exactly my point - no one cares whether a road has a C number or 
not, map users just care what the road is _like_ - I don't see how you can 
say that a relatively narrow road with no centre line is "like" a big dual 
carriageway.

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

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence