[OSM-talk] [Fwd: Re: Proliferation of path vs. footway]

[Pieren]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 8:24 PM, David Earl<david at frankieandshadow.com> wrote:
> So what you're saying is that
>
> - each editor and data consumer has to have its own set of national
> rules and defaults rather than defining them centrally (so inevitably
> they'll end up different);
>
> - we have to massively increase the amount of data we store by saying
> for every road that it is open 24 hours a day (because some aren't) and
> has a 44 tonne weight limit (or whatever it is by default in your
> country) except for the few cases where it isn't; all cycleways don't
> permit llama pack animals (because some in Peru do) and all motorways
> explicitly do or don't permit horse drawn vehicles.
>
> - we can't type a simple tag any more, we have to go via a menu or a
> form because there are so many of them. Every highway would have to
> carry maybe thirty or forty tags giving use cases, and every time we
> realise we are missing a use case (say we discover motorways in Ecuador
> permit learner drivers to use them [please don't tell me this isn't the
> case - it's only an example]) we have to add tags to every other highway
> in the world to say that there learner drivers can't, otherwise we're
> assuming a default.
>
> - and that we have to update almost every way in the system already and
> change every bit of software we already have
>
> David
>

all +1.

And it's clear that if the wiki is used as reference for defaults, it
will be watched by many people and risks of vandalism on this part is
very small.
And applications don't have necessarily to know in which country they
are, defaults can be preprocessed for their needs (e.g. for routing).
Pieren