[OSM-talk] New dimension of vandalism

Renaud Martinet karouf at gmail.com
Wed Aug 26 18:38:42 BST 2009


2009/8/26 Peter Körner <osm-lists at mazdermind.de>:
>> The wiki should not only match the reality, it should suggest proper
>> behaviour to (new) users. Text like
>>
>>     If a section of road in the US looks like a motorway then it can
>>     be tagged as a motorway without researching its funding sources or
>>     driving up and down the road looking for an Interstate sign.
>>
>> to me suggests lazy tagging.
> No, that's the way OSM works. Knowledge of local users count's more than
> signs - at least as far as I understood it.
>
>> In The Netherlands there are two types of motorway, "autoweg" (max
>> speed = 100 km/h, could have same-level crossings) and "snelweg" (max
>> speed = 120 km/h, no same-level crossings), which are quite difficult
>> to discern without driving up to the entrance and checking the signs.
>> However, they are sufficiently different that I think it's worth it to
>> either tag it as highway=road and let someone else determine the
>> proper tag or just to make sure what kind of road something is before
>> it is tagged.
> In my opinion the value of the highway-tag is determind by the
> importance of the road as seen from a local user. If the "autoweg" is
> much more important in a place as a "snelweg" nearby, it should be
> tagged higher, regardless of any signs. You are free to add a maxspeed
> with 100/120 if you want to.
>
> Peter
>

Agreed.

The French state declassified a lot of national roads ("routes
nationales") in the last few years because they were not state funded
anymore. So the N89 for example became the D 2089 (D is for
departmental roads) but it is still a much more important road that
all the D roads around it. The D 2089 is still tagged as primary and
all the other original D roads around are highway=secondary. Doing
otherwise would have been an error in my view.

I guess that the highway tag used to describe physical features of
different types of roads back when OSM was quite UK-centric. But it's
not anymore and tying the meaning of the highway tag to physical
features would just make it impossible to use widely.


Renaud.




More information about the talk mailing list