[OSM-talk] Path vs footway vs cycleway vs...

[Nop]

Hi!

Roy Wallace schrieb:
> The newbie reading these conflicting responses either 1) becomes
> confused, or 2) begins to think that best practice is to invent your
> own meaning for existing tags and then pass this secret knowledge on
> to only the newbies who ask via email. This is not a good outcome.

The newbie - who usually assumes that there is a simple and 
straightforward answer to the simple question "how to I tag a footway" - 
becomes confused - and frustrated that such a basic thing is unsolved 
and not looking like it's going to be solved one of these years. To the 
newcomer, this is somewhere between unexpected and crazy.

 > So if consistency is the goal, you cannot rely on various personal
 > opinions that exist only in people's minds and in email discussions
 > from time to time (which no doubt only a small proportion of mappers
 > ever read). You must write it down for reference. And if what's
 > written down has flaws, they must be fixed.

No help there. The major contractiory interpretations of the tags around 
this topic are all "documented" in the wiki in contradictory ways. It 
just depends on which page you find first and what conlusions you derive 
from rather fuzzy definitions.

> Note also that by the wiki serving as a "reference" I do not mean that
> the wiki page for, say, footway must give only the one "true"
> definition. It should 1) document the usage of tags as they occur in
> the database, 2) detail any ongoing controversy and 3) if a consensus
> exists, give a clear recommendation on how the tag should be used by
> new mappers.

1) The same tags are used with up to 5 different meanings - usually one 
wiki page only states one interpretation, but there are many different 
pages.
2) AFAIK the only attempt at a neutral display of the different opinions 
is here: 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Consolidation_footway_cycleway_path
3) There has never been anything approaching a consensus. Not even 
close. The discussion has been going around in circles since I first 
thought there had to be a simple answer to a simple question. Which is 
about a year. :-)

bye
         Nop