[OSM-talk] residential and unclassified in Australia WAS definition of the main highway-tag

[Jonathan Bennett]

James Livingston wrote:
> In addition the "Australian Tagging Guidelines" (which Liz mentioned  
> were written a year before the residential page) explicitly disagree  
> with the residential page.

I've done some investigation on this specific point, and found the
following:

The edit which added the current definition of residential roads to that
page was made on 2nd January 2008
(http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php?title=Australian_Tagging_Guidelines&diff=67689&oldid=66241)
by Lakeyboy in an edit with no summary. I can find no discussion of this
change on the wiki talk page or Talk-AU beforehand.

I can only assume, based on the available evidence, that this wasn't a
change that the Australian OSM community arrived at through consensus.
Rather it was one mapper's idea that he didn't discuss with anyone
before putting into the wiki. The change was also made after the
convention for the residential tag had been established elsewhere.

It's up to the AU community what to do about this, but be aware that in
the European Axis there's a very strong feeling that for a road to be
tagged residential, there needs to be houses (or other dwellings) on it,
and for it not to be designed for through traffic.

-- 
Jonathan (Jonobennett)