[OSM-talk] Improving ref=* documentation

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

sent from a phone

> On 4 Aug 2021, at 23:38, Brian M. Sperlongano <zelonewolf at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> If the sign on the ground doesn't match the government's database, then the obvious answer is that the government database is wrong.  I don't see why we would replicate demonstrably wrong data into OSM.


without looking further into this I would not dare to tell who is wrong here (have seen wrong (outdated) route signs in masses), but I would think the situation should be mapped as accurate and detailed as someone is willing to do it. Map your observation and research results (aka signposted and officially published truths), use specific tags, e.g. official_ref or old_ref rather than just “ref”, to make it clear what you are describing. For example there are already 581k old_ref and 171k unsigned_ref in the db. 

Cheers Martin