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

[Roy Wallace]

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 8:06 PM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 7:32 PM, Roy Wallace <waldo000000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > IMHO "Don't piss off the whole world, just piss off one country" is a
>> > bad
>> > solution, if there is no need to piss off anyone at all.
>>
>> +1
>> I see your point, but WOW, that seems like a lot of extra STUFF to
>> maintain - and we don't have a good track record with maintenance (see
>> the wiki... :P). You don't need it. Use this, which is exactly as
>> *already documented in the wiki*:
>>
>> UC1: oneway=yes; cycleway=opposite
>> UC2: oneway=yes
>
> You just pissed off Noppia. You just told them that every single oneway
> street has to be explicitly marked "cycleway=opposite". The citizens of
> Noppia resent this, and most of them refuse to put it in. "After all", they
> reason, "everyone knows that you can ride the wrong way up any oneway
> street".
>
> And you reply...?

Hmm good question...

Several thoughts:

1) I told them that *the wiki recommends* that they do need to use
cycleway=opposite where appropriate.

1a) This is different to *me* telling them what to do - the wiki
carries more weight as it is the outcome of discussion (see the
discussion page, for example). It's also where newbies go to learn how
to map, and where others (me, at least) go for reference. Using a
common set of guidelines like this is key to maintaining consistency.
Also, importantly, if the Noppians think something is suboptimal in
the wiki, and want to re-open the discussion, propose something else,
etc., there are mechanisms available for that.

1b) Is it really so hard to add cycleway=opposite where applicable?
Really? Maybe I'm missing something (but then again, I'm one of those
strange people who have no problem adding source=* tags to everything
I change). I am always a little perplexed at some people's aversion to
extra tags - we have autocomplete, presets, DB compression, ... I
don't think it is ever worth compromising consistency to save
keystrokes.

2) They may think "everyone" knows the rules in Noppia, but this is
unlikely to be true. e.g. what if I visit Noppia on holiday or
business? What if my routing software uses the defaults for oneway=*
as described in the wiki?

3) You say the citizens "refuse" to follow the wiki's recommendations.
If they do realise that this is a problem, I cannot imagine that they
would refuse to change their practices - after all, usually OSM
contributors do want to contribute to a consistent i.e. useful OSM
database. If they can't see that ignoring the wiki can be dangerous,
then I would probably leave the room in frustration.

But Steve, the point is that surely the Noppians also want to come up
with a solution that gives us the best possible OSM database. Right? I
would ask them: what do they think is the best way to achieve that?