[OSM-talk] definition of the main highway-tag

[Liz]

On Fri, 31 Jul 2009, John Smith wrote, replying to Martin Koppenhoefer:
> > Well, I just see it as a hierarchical line:
> > residential
> > unclassified
> > tert
> > sec
> > prim
> > trunk
> > motorway
> >
> > it's simple as that, and I don't see any problem.
>
> Maybe to you, but I don't see it that way based on reading the english
> language wiki page and mapping out rural roads lesser than residential as
> unclassified.
>

I've done a lot of work in rural Australia, and after having lots of 
difficulty classifying roads was drummed into shape by the other mappers on 
talk_au. 

In Au we are not using unclassified in towns. We use unclassified rurally only 
for roads of least importance - the same ones we would tag residential in 
towns. 

The wiki is not in any way simple to comprehend on this - that's where I got 
lost. English around the world is used in many different ways, and what may be 
very clear to someone is 'as clear as mud" in another branch of the language. 
This is before we bring in other languages.
After this we wrote our own Au specific pages, because we have a whole 
continent and can bend the rules/guidelines our own way.

Martin mentions http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Residential
The history for this shows that was written after we wrote our Australian 
tagging guidelines - nearly a year later.
Certainly by the time "unclassified" is being suggested for use in towns where 
Au mappers use "tertiary" the Australian practice is well entrenched.
We mark out roads in commercial and industrial areas as residential too, even 
though dwellings are not the prime buildings.

Liz