[OSM-talk] tagging suitability for use by race bikes to roads

[Ari Torhamo]

ke, 2008-05-07 kello 22:35 +0100, Chris Hill kirjoitti:

> The options suggested were Excellent, Good, Poor and Avoid, so Good
> and Poor are adjacent options and so if a road is not quite "Good" it
> must be "Poor". 

OK, sorry, I missed that one. But as you too seem to indicate, "poor"
and "good" are perhaps too far away from each other to be used as
adjacent grades. Also, although my English may fail me, a road that
would be tagged as "poor" for racing bicycles, would be "avoided" by
most riders.
 
> > Grading
> > probably works better, when its mostly done by people who know the
> > subject well - as I guess would be the case here. Anyway, for grading to
> > work, good guidelines would be a must.
> >   
> My measure of a good tagging system is that it is described well
> enough that you don't need to be an expert to tag correctly. 

I think saying "tag correctly" in context of gradings is... well, a
nice idea. The probelm is easy to see when you look at the tagging
instructions for "tracktype"; my grade2 might be your grade3, or your
grade4 might be my grade5.

People who would do the tagging for racing bikes would be those who
ride, or have ridden such a bike themselves (those would be the
experts), or who are otherwise involved, like who go to see
competitions, have a friend or family member who rides a racing bicycle,
etc. (those would be the people who know the subject well). I really
can't see other people being interested. There might be a warning
"Don't do this unless you know what you are doing" in the tagging
instructions to give us the final peace of mind.

When I think of it, why categorically restrict grading only to features
that everybody can grade (relatively) "correctly" after just having a
look at the tagging description? Quickly thinking this seems to me like
an unnecessary limitation to OSM. If a tag that requires more knowledge
would be usefull for a certaing group of users, why not let it to be
used? Everybody doesn't *have to* tag anything. Again, an appropriate
warning of the required level of knowledge might be used in the
instruction. Or maybe I have missed something :-)

Cheers,

Ari Torhamo