[Talk-us] Tagging of county roads
> The 'parentheses' idea for tagging county roads would be mine. I used it in > New Jersey, and then I applied it to county highways when doing fixup in > Florida. For some strange reason, NE2 liked my system so much that he used > it to tag county roads wherever he edited (including the whole of Florida) > after that. It wasn't so much that I preferred it to others as that I initially saw it in use and thought it was the standard, and by the time I had realized there were other standards in use elsewhere it had become the standard in Florida. I'm not going to change over manually, because that way lies typos. Instead I hope one day there's a single method of tagging state and county roads that has enough consensus to implement everywhere, and a semi-automated process can help convert. It's worth remembering that US maps almost always place the number in either the shield used for the road or a generic shape (usually circle for state and rectangle for county, though that's the reverse of West Virginia's signs). I don't know why there hasn't been any work on rendering U.S. Highway and Interstate shields with a simple pattern match of "US *" and "I *"; it doesn't need to be perfect, just a reasonable outline. Hopefully, if this were ever done, it would provide an impetus to standardize tagging of lower types so they too could be rendered consistently. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Tagging of county roads
Except in the case of Bergen County's individual county routes and many of Camden County's roads (which use the old white square), county highways are signed using the MUTCD pentagons. County highways are numbered from 501 to 585 for those going all the way across the state or through multiple counties; they are numbered from 600 onward for routes assigned by the individual county (except in Monmouth County and Bergen County). The parentheses were meant to denote the route's inferiority to state highways; it never crossed my mind that they would be interpreted as a state route circle (though if the practice were carried over to West Virginia or Virginia it would certainly be all right) -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/Tagging-of-county-roads-tp5100824p5111517.html Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Tagging of county roads
On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 9:08 PM, CrystalWalrein wrote: > > The 'parentheses' idea for tagging county roads would be mine. I used it in > New Jersey, and then I applied it to county highways when doing fixup in > Florida. For some strange reason, NE2 liked my system so much that he used > it to tag county roads wherever he edited (including the whole of Florida) > after that. So that's what those are? I always thought they were state routes or something. That would make sense, considering NJ's state route markers are just circles, and a number in parentheses looks similar to a number in a circle. (Read: that practice is possibly misleading and probably a bad idea.) So anyway, it's been a good decade since I've been through NJ. How are county route numbers signed there? -- David "Smith" a.k.a. Vid the Kid a.k.a. Bír'd'in Does this font make me look fat? ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Tagging of county roads
The 'parentheses' idea for tagging county roads would be mine. I used it in New Jersey, and then I applied it to county highways when doing fixup in Florida. For some strange reason, NE2 liked my system so much that he used it to tag county roads wherever he edited (including the whole of Florida) after that. As for county route relations, I currently use the idea of network=US:[state]:[county] floated above. The only annoyance is that in Potlatch, my main client, the ref number is clipped out by the role box. -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/Tagging-of-county-roads-tp5100824p5111208.html Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Tagging of county roads
Hi, Apollinaris Schoell wrote: >> 2. Are we in a decline because we are not open enough to non-geeks. >> My answer is "no, we are not in a decline, we are growing" and this >> is supported by statistics. I challenge anybody to show me an area >> of OSM which is actually in decline or even in stagnation (as >> opposed to "not growing as quickly as someone has hoped"). > > Mike answered this already, and this is easy to prove. activity on > talk-us is practically 0, compare it with and canada and their > population size it's obvious, the number of active mappers is only a > handful even in large metropolitan areas. To prove a decline, you would have to show that there used to be more mappers and they have now left. The fact that there are few mappers is not in itself a reason to be concerned; after all there were very few mappers in the UK five years ago and look where they are now. WITHOUT having an easy to use UI. Does the UK have more technology-savvy people than the US? I should be surprised. > I didn't call for drastic action at all. I am not SteveC. All I like > to see is to do things in a way that we don't scare away mappers and > back to the initial topic don't map for the renderer You said that unless OSM opened itself more to non-geeks it would quickly die. That sounded to me like you wanted to change something. - And change isn't bad generally. But change shouldn't be driven by fear of dying ;-) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Tagging of county roads
On 27 May 2010, at 16:12 , Frederik Ramm wrote: > Apo, > > Apollinaris Schoell wrote: >> totally disagree. if osm doesn't open itself more to non geeks the >> project will die as fast as many other open source or crowd source >> projects. > > ""Citation needed"" ;-) > this in't a german wikipedia article, posts are personal opinions not facts > There are different strands in this argument: > > 1. Should we use human-readable tags. My answer is "yes definitely". But this > has nothing to do with making things simpler for non-geek users; au > contraire, non-technophiles will depend very much on shiny UI that shields > them from any tag, human-readable or cryptic. Having human-readable tags is > important for the geek users who want to grep through their XML or place tags > by hand. usability on all levels is important. the absolute newbie will use Josm, Potlatch presets. and learn the key-value pairs easily. but if we do heavy translation into cryptic codes this makes it difficult for no reason. Why does osm use xml instead a binary format like shape? it opened the GIS world to all kinds of people with technical skills. Going forward we need also attract normal people and some of them may turn into experts. Building artificial walls anywhere from POI adding to imports, writing bots, … is bad. Wherever there is no good reason to make things complicated let's keep it easy for any experience level. > > 2. Are we in a decline because we are not open enough to non-geeks. My answer > is "no, we are not in a decline, we are growing" and this is supported by > statistics. I challenge anybody to show me an area of OSM which is actually > in decline or even in stagnation (as opposed to "not growing as quickly as > someone has hoped"). Mike answered this already, and this is easy to prove. activity on talk-us is practically 0, compare it with and canada and their population size it's obvious, the number of active mappers is only a handful even in large metropolitan areas. > > 3. Will the project die if it does not open itself more to non-geeks? > Possibly, after the geek population has been exhausted, but that is going to > be some time. I don't think any kind of drastic action is needed. This ship > sails along nice and steady, and we need sailors to do all the work, but we > don't need drastic course corrections. > I didn't call for drastic action at all. I am not SteveC. All I like to see is to do things in a way that we don't scare away mappers and back to the initial topic don't map for the renderer > "Keep up the good work" is the motto, and OSM will prevail. > > Bye > Frederik > ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Tagging of county roads
> 2. Are we in a decline because we are not open enough to non-geeks. My > answer is "no, we are not in a decline, we are growing" and this is > supported by statistics. I challenge anybody to show me an area of OSM > which is actually in decline or even in stagnation (as opposed to "not > growing as quickly as someone has hoped"). In the US, there are huge areas with a single or no mappers. Inertia prevents lone mappers from establishing a community because to outsiders, "Existing maps are good enough" , and very few people actually want to create or use GPS Navigator maps for a need that their existing maps cannot fill. > 3. Will the project die if it does not open itself more to non-geeks? > Possibly, after the geek population has been exhausted, but that is > going to be some time. I don't think any kind of drastic action is > needed. This ship sails along nice and steady, and we need sailors to do > all the work, but we don't need drastic course corrections. While the US has the Interstates and US highway networks in decent shape regarding routing and topology, the general lack of street number addressing and lack of road surveys will keep the data useless for general navigation or map providers for a long time. The lone mapper will not be able to survey every obscure network of streets outside of his area, thus missing all the new construction and TIGER errors. Many people (even geeks) that I know look at the project and say "interesting", but have no further interest. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Tagging of county roads
Apo, Apollinaris Schoell wrote: > totally disagree. if osm doesn't open itself more to non geeks the > project will die as fast as many other open source or crowd source > projects. ""Citation needed"" ;-) There are different strands in this argument: 1. Should we use human-readable tags. My answer is "yes definitely". But this has nothing to do with making things simpler for non-geek users; au contraire, non-technophiles will depend very much on shiny UI that shields them from any tag, human-readable or cryptic. Having human-readable tags is important for the geek users who want to grep through their XML or place tags by hand. 2. Are we in a decline because we are not open enough to non-geeks. My answer is "no, we are not in a decline, we are growing" and this is supported by statistics. I challenge anybody to show me an area of OSM which is actually in decline or even in stagnation (as opposed to "not growing as quickly as someone has hoped"). 3. Will the project die if it does not open itself more to non-geeks? Possibly, after the geek population has been exhausted, but that is going to be some time. I don't think any kind of drastic action is needed. This ship sails along nice and steady, and we need sailors to do all the work, but we don't need drastic course corrections. "Keep up the good work" is the motto, and OSM will prevail. Bye Frederik ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Tagging of county roads
>osm principle is to use human readable tags and values. it's a system >designed for mappers not for GIS experts or programmers. the hardcore >geeks can understand cryptic codes but normal people can't. if we want to >attract more mappers this is crucial. if we start to make osm a pure geek >project it will not survive. I was attracted to it as a geek, after experiencing the downfalls of closed, buggy, incapable "user-friendly" mapping applications. I don't believe the underlying system _is_ designed for totally non-geek mappers (if there is such a thing - it's kind of a geeky pursuit IMO :) ) - it requires way too much research to figure out which tags to use. That's the point of more user-friendly interfaces, like Potlatch - to hide some of those underlying details. That's where we're going to get and keep larger numbers of more casual users. I _do_ agree that network:state:county is more cryptic than separate tags for the network type, state code, and county. However, I think it is a lot easier to choose a single key and enter one value (or just choose it from a short list in JOSM) than choosing three separate keys and entering/choosing their values, and productivity has to be an important goal in user satisfaction and retention, too. Also, given that network:state:county is already documented somewhere for the relation, I'd like to just expand its use to the ways themselves because I don't believe the ref tagging is complete without it. -- Alan Mintz ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Tagging of county roads
On 27 May 2010, at 10:15 , David ``Smith'' wrote: >> >> osm principle is to use human readable tags and values. it's a system >> designed for mappers not for GIS experts or programmers. the hardcore geeks >> can understand cryptic codes but normal people can't. if we want to attract >> more mappers this is crucial. if we start to make osm a pure geek project it >> will not survive. > > The only humans who are going to see these particular tags are > mappers, since no sane application for non-editors should expose these > tags directly. And mappers who are doing anything with route > relations should have done some reading on the wiki about it, > otherwise they wouldn't know what the heck they're doing anyway. Once > they see that US routes are network=US or =US:US, state routes are > US:CA, etcetera, the meaning of US:CA:Orange should be obvious. And > ideally, anyone doing mapping at this level would be coordinating with > other Calfornia mappers via the wiki, which should have > California-relevant county-road tagging conventions documented, > assuming agreement has been reached. Or they'd ask for specifics on > this email list. Which brings us back to the top of the thread… totally disagree. if osm doesn't open itself more to non geeks the project will die as fast as many other open source or crowd source projects. the scare new mappers away rate for osm is incredible high. making it more cryptic is a guarantee to increase it even more. what is obvious to you and me isn't for 99.9% of people and probably to 80% potential contributors. > > -- > David "Smith" > a.k.a. Vid the Kid > a.k.a. Bír'd'in > > Does this font make me look fat? > > ___ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Tagging of county roads
On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 3:58 AM, Apollinaris Schoell wrote: >>> in general the better tag structure and very common approach is to define a >>> namespace like this >>> >>> network=Orange >>> network:state=CA (or california to make it human readable) >>> network:country=US, but this is probably overkill >>> >>> this is much easier to understand for humans and it is easier to parse by >>> applications. packing all info into a single tag value by some cryptic >>> codes is tagging for a specific application. >> >> I don't think it matters if it's cryptic or not. If applications do >> anything with these, it will probably be matched against a lookup >> table rather than parsed into components. For example, if an >> application does anything special with county highways in Orange >> County, CA, it will notice US:CA:Orange (or whatever) and match that >> exactly. Or, if it only cares that it's a county route, it will >> notice that the network matches the pattern US:*:* (as nearly all >> county route networks are currently tagged in practice) and identify >> the route however the application is meant to identify county routes >> to the user. Or, most probably of all, the application doesn't care >> at all about county routes, won't find any match to US:CA:Orange in >> its lookup tables, and ignore the relation altogether. >> > > osm principle is to use human readable tags and values. it's a system > designed for mappers not for GIS experts or programmers. the hardcore geeks > can understand cryptic codes but normal people can't. if we want to attract > more mappers this is crucial. if we start to make osm a pure geek project it > will not survive. The only humans who are going to see these particular tags are mappers, since no sane application for non-editors should expose these tags directly. And mappers who are doing anything with route relations should have done some reading on the wiki about it, otherwise they wouldn't know what the heck they're doing anyway. Once they see that US routes are network=US or =US:US, state routes are US:CA, etcetera, the meaning of US:CA:Orange should be obvious. And ideally, anyone doing mapping at this level would be coordinating with other Calfornia mappers via the wiki, which should have California-relevant county-road tagging conventions documented, assuming agreement has been reached. Or they'd ask for specifics on this email list. Which brings us back to the top of the thread... -- David "Smith" a.k.a. Vid the Kid a.k.a. Bír'd'in Does this font make me look fat? ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
