[OSM-talk] Undiscussed (?) edits removing lesser-used highway=* tags

Andy Townsend ajt1047 at gmail.com
Fri Nov 6 22:01:18 UTC 2015


On 06/11/2015 20:42, Andrew Guertin wrote:
>
> An in-between example: on 
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/38089492/history, 
> highway=stepping_stones was replaced with highway=path. While this 
> helps consumers use the data, it loses information that should have 
> been kept (perhaps with surface=* or something similar).
>
Hmm - that does look like somewhere where data has been lost. Previously 
there were quite a lot of changeset discussion comments from GerdP 
asking about odd values:

http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussions (scroll down a bit)

I'd have expected that that change would have merited a request to the 
original mapper too - surprised it didn't get one.

>
> Does anyone know if this was discussed anywhere? I've contacted GerdP 
> with a changeset comment at 
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/35109232 but there hasn't 
> (yet) been much time for a response. 

Given how quiet OSM traffic normally goes at weekends, I'd certainly 
wait until next week before assuming that you won't get a reply.

>
> P.S.: We should have something like a cleanups at osm.org mailing list so 
> that these kinds of things have a place to be discussed, because there 
> are a lot of positives to be had...
>

I'm not especially convinced of that - we've got the "tagging" list 
already for "how should X be tagged", and it's important that 
discussions about edits which at the very least border on the mechanical 
should be discussed by the wider community though. Sometimes "tagging" 
can turn into a bit of an echo chamber; it can appear to be full of 
people who tell other people how to map rather than do it themselves*, 
and I'd expect that "cleanups" would too. The "discuss" section of 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Automated_Edits_code_of_conduct 
covers this already.

Cheers,

Andy (SomeoneElse)

* 
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2015-October/027053.html 
guilty as charged :)







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