There are two fundamental approaches to this and I believe that in this discussion the two are mixed:
1. The physical status of the road is described as well as possible and it is left to the receiver of this information to judge if he/she can use the road. This is quite complex as many parameter play a role: on gravel and rock roads smoothness is important, on sand roads how soft the sand is, for fords how deep the water is, but also the bottom structure etc. Furthermore it is season dependent: a road may be perfectly OK in the dry season and hardly passable in the rainy season 2. The tagger determines how hard it will be to use the road, irrespective of the reasons why it is hard or easy: there can be different reasons why a road is horrible. This approach requires a distinction between different types of vehicles: I have driven the Turkana route in north Kenya in a small convoy with motorcycles and 4WD cars. Some parts of the road had boulders as big as children's heads and were relatively easy for the 4WD's, but very hard for the motorcycles. However, crossing a small stream with a very steep decline/incline was relatively easy for the motorcycles and very hard for the cars. I would favour the second approach as the judgement is made by someone who was there and has seen it; I admit this is subjective. The approach does require an attribute describing the road per type of vehicle, and sometimes also per season. I share the opinion that grading in words is better than in numbers: in case of hotels 5 stars is the best, for the tracks grade 5 is the worst. So in its most extensive form you would get something like road_quality:car:rainy_seasion=very_poor. On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 11:36 AM Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdre...@gmail.com> wrote: > > 2015-03-12 11:21 GMT+01:00 Martin Vonwald <imagic....@gmail.com>: > >> Is grade1 now excellent or horrible? >> >> No, numeric values are not a good choice - really not. I also don't like >> the values much, but at least it's clear that "good" is better than "bad". >> > > > it really doesn't help you a lot to know whether "good" is better than > "bad", you have to know if "good" or "bad" are sufficient for your current > means of transport. > I'd use grade1 etc. because this is an established scale from tracktype, > and should be understandable therefor. To use these values you'll have to > look them up, and this can be seen as an advantage: unlike "good" or "bad" > (which do have precise meaning according to the wiki, but are often used by > the expectation the user has of their meaning) it will improve consistency > (hopefully). > > cheers, > Martin > _______________________________________________ > Tagging mailing list > Tagging@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging >
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