[OSM-talk] Mapnik rendering of paths + place=locality in general

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Igor Brejc wrote:
> Anyway, I checked Tagwatch for Germany and it has 
> some 17,000 paths, so it's not totally unused.

I checked a random sample. Of 10 "highway=path" objects I checked, 8 had 
been "highway=footway" before someone decided to change it. One was a 
"highway=residential" before. One was newly created as "highway=path".

I made an effort to select objects edited by different users.

So: Someone thought that dropping the well-established and well-working 
highway=footway was a good idea. He or she seems to have managed to 
convince people to actually *change* existing data to fit his new idea, 
without, obviously, spending a second thinking about the data consumers 
(i.e. renderers and others).

Unfortunately it is much too easy to upset things in this way, which is 
simply irresponsible - if you break a working system then it is your 
damn responsibility to get it working again, and not to complain about 
others not following your command. (The "you" here being meant generally 
- I know that you, Igor, were not involved.)

I have added the following to the "Proposed features" page but I fear 
I'm fighting windmills here:

"Please note: OpenStreetMap software is designed and maintained by 
individuals. They may or may not follow or like new feature proposals. 
Do not expect that just because something passes a vote, it will 
automatically show up in map renderings or influence routing. This is 
true especially if you intend to change a hitherto working tag schema 
into something else; the makers of maps and software will not 
necessarily view this as an improvement, and unless you get their buy-in 
beforehand, your change might actually worsen the OpenStreetMap user 
experience. A majority of 5 or 10 or 50 votes out of tens of thousands 
of contributors does not put you in a position to demand something from 
software makers. If the success of your proposal depends on changes to 
software, either find people who will do it for you or do it yourself."

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"