[OSM-talk] [RFC] highway=unclassified currently is too ambiguous, so here's my proposal to fix it.

[Roy Wallace]

On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 1:37 AM, Richard
Mann<richard.mann.westoxford at googlemail.com> wrote:
> As indicated, I've had a go at a rewrite of the unclassified page:
>
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dunclassified
>
> Comments in the usual place (or have your own go at hacking it)

I've added my thoughts to the discussion page. Replicated below:

Presently IMHO it's an absolute mess. Try reading the whole page
through once, then see if you can explain to someone what it means. Or
better yet, get a non-OSM'er to read it and see if they understand.
Here's another idea: there appears to be several distinct definitions
of the tag in current use, according to talk and talk-au mailing list
discussion e.g.

   1. urban roads in industrial areas less important than highway=tertiary
   2. "something bigger than highway=residential but smaller than
highway=tertiary"
   3. rural roads less important than highway=tertiary
   4. "a road equal to a residential road, but outside residential
areas"; "a road roughly equal to residential but without people living
there"
   5. "the lowest street/road in the interconnecting grid, be it in
urban or rural areas"

Rather than trying to unify the different usages into one big
confusing mess, maybe it would be better to separately explain each
current usage? i.e. "This tag is used if the road is A or B or C or D
or E". This more closely reflects reality and IMHO will not be any
harder to read than the current mess. This could also lead the way to
*eventually* replace each different usage with a tag of its own.