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

[Roy Wallace]

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 9:51 PM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 10:28 PM, Roy Wallace <waldo000000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I think we should aim for a globally consistent database, because
>> 1) I travel a fair bit (I've never been to Bulgaria, but maybe someday
>> soon)
>> 2) I do NOT want to be limited to "Noppia-compatible" routing software
>> if I visit Noppia (etc.)
>
> Consider it "internationally aware" software. Routing software that is aware of the local laws of each country seems obvious.

Um...what??? That will not write itself. Do you expect us to
successfully digitize and maintain a database of all laws of all
countries? In a wiki, even? That's ambitious! I'd prefer to stick to
mapping what's on the ground.

>> 3) I think it's not that hard to be globally consistent - it just
>> comes at the cost of verbosity (which is cheap)
>
> I think verbosity is expensive. My experience is with Wikipedia, where
> everyone always thinks the labour is free. It may be free, but it's finite.
> And the more you get people to waste their time doing tedious busywork, the
> less time they spend doing useful things.

I agree that tedious busywork is not good. But we have computers -
surely we're able to use presets etc. so that more
verbosity/explicitness requires negligible amounts of additional
labour. Let's get the tagging schemes right first. Seriously, it's not
going to be a big deal to e.g. add foot=yes/no to cycleways. Look at
the big picture - we're making a map of the entire world. We're trying
to find the best and easiest way to do it. Remember that additional
labour adding foot=yes/no can *avoid* future labour spent sorting out
messes like this one. And it can give us a better quality result.

>> Adding tags that help clarify what I mean does not piss me off. I am
>> quite happy to add direction=clockwise to roundabouts if necessary.
>> Ultimately, why not aim to have direction=* applied to ALL
>> roundabouts?
>
> Sure, by all means, have that tag applied. But forcing someone to manually
> add it when the roundabout in question is in a left-drive country is
> insulting. Maybe the client could add it automatically. I don't know.

Well, I don't find it insulting. And yes, the "client" (editor) could
certainly add it automatically. Remember that we are also not limited
to current versions of current editors - editors can be improved.

Let's get the tagging right first - editor improvements will follow. I
think we shouldn't "tag for the editor" (if you know what I mean) :P