[OSM-talk] What's the policy on unsurveyed roads from imagery?

Anthony osm at inbox.org
Sat Dec 26 16:08:23 GMT 2009


On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 9:56 AM, John Smith <deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com>wrote:

> It isn't the most objective way to do things, but then it's going to
> be subjective somewhere, the only difference is if you make the
> decision or someone in council does.
>

I'm perfectly fine with letting the people in council waste their time with
subjective categorization and then either 1) copying the results, if they
have some sort of legal distinction; or 2) ignoring them altogether, if they
don't.

 Another way to look at it is if you have similar roads which are the
> quickest way to go usually.
>

I have this insane theory that if the renderers just outright refused to
color roads without speed limit tags, these tags would get added a lot
quicker.  Once you have roads and speed limits, the question of "which roads
are the quickest way to go usually" can be determined by an algorithm.

I guess to some extent it's a question of whether or not a street map
database without speed limits is "good enough".  I'd say it is not.  At
least not in the more heavily populated areas of the world.  I suppose all
the bicyclists in OSM would disagree with that, but they don't have much use
for primary/secondary/tertiary designations either, do they?

This is another endless OSM debate, in general I look at how used a
> road is, how urban it is, if it's a main through fare or is the "main"
> street in towns and has since had a bunch of roundabouts and humps put
> in to slow traffic and then take an educated guess as to what to tag a
> road.
>

Mapping a road "the wrong color" when there aren't any traffic_calming tags
is another great way to get people adding appropriate tags.

Yes, it's an endless debate, so I'll try not to spend too much time on it.
I think it is useful to point out the problems every once in a while,
though.
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