I greatly appreciate your summary, Kytömaa. I'm not sure exactly where to go from here, I'm taking the "path of least disagreement" (so, I decided to support 3 tags as possible/necessary to make this judgement: tracktype, smoothness and surface). At some point in the debate I felt that tracktype and smoothness are being used for a very similar purpose (representing how easy it is to pass through specific kinds of ways using some unspecified generic vehicle), and that led me to try to merge the two somehow. A new tag would solve problems of imprecise descriptions with both tags, and also that of questionable tag values, but I don't want to push this if nobody else thinks it's a good idea.
At some other point, I thought we could modify the tracktype tag with new levels so as to make it more similar to the smoothness tag. In fact, with new grades (grade1b, grade1c ande grade2b) and a slight changes in the definition of each grade, the two tags would be essentially equal from a practical perspective, they would only have different tag and value names. I don't think this "slight change in definition" would make current mapping "invalid", except for very rare situations, especially because the application of tracktype values don't seem to be following their definition strictly (in fact, the suggestions we got here all resemble the judgement one would make when using the smoothness tag). By "updating" their definition to reflect practice and incorporating ideas from the smoothness tag, we would avoid the problem of a new tag value, and the problem with smoothness value names, and it would give us a single tag that would be much more reliable than the surface tag for the judgement of "which ways are in poor conditions". However, tracktype values would remain non-intuitive. On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 3:31 PM, Kytömaa Lauri <lauri.kyto...@aalto.fi> wrote: > >>Tracktype= has about 2.5 million grade2 and beyond ways. "Tracktype is a >>measure of how well-maintained a track or other minor road is." >>http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tracktype > > Having now read through the messages, I find that nobody has mentioned a > thing about tracktype, as it was initially described and used; and how the > values are still described. > > Even if there's usually a correlation (even a strong one), it's not directly > about how easily some vehicles can get through, but about the mixture of hard > materials and soft materials. > grade1: just hard materials > 3: roughly 50/50 mix > 5: only soft materials > > What's beyond "only soft materials", foam? And true, in this some surface= > values are impossible with some of the grades. > > Many extreme_4wd_only rocky ways could be even grade2; it's the clearance > needed and the inclines that set their limits, not the mixture of soil > present. Likewise, that golf club grass footpath may well be grade5. > > But maybe the usage has overruled the strictly physical characteristics that > it used to describe and the values are used for all sorts of different ideas? > If so, then this is again a case where the community failed in documentation > back in 2008, or sometime after that when the pages were subsequently > "improved". > > -- > Alv > _______________________________________________ > Tagging mailing list > Tagging@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging -- Fernando Trebien +55 (51) 9962-5409 "The speed of computer chips doubles every 18 months." (Moore's law) "The speed of software halves every 18 months." (Gates' law) _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
