I remember that the first proposal of "path" tried to deprecate footway, cycleway and bridleway but it was removed after legitimate complaints. I think the wiki page should clearly state that the tag can be used only if the way has really no main usage and only in that case. I'm sure that many people prefere to add one single tag highway=cycleway instead of highway=path and bicycle=designated. I agree that trying to deprecate existing tags by the backdoor is not fair, especially when it is not discussed/approved by the community. Pieren
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 6:18 PM, Frederik Ramm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > Igor Brejc wrote: >> Anyway, I checked Tagwatch for Germany and it has >> some 17,000 paths, so it's not totally unused. > > I checked a random sample. Of 10 "highway=path" objects I checked, 8 had > been "highway=footway" before someone decided to change it. One was a > "highway=residential" before. One was newly created as "highway=path". > > I made an effort to select objects edited by different users. > > So: Someone thought that dropping the well-established and well-working > highway=footway was a good idea. He or she seems to have managed to > convince people to actually *change* existing data to fit his new idea, > without, obviously, spending a second thinking about the data consumers > (i.e. renderers and others). > > Unfortunately it is much too easy to upset things in this way, which is > simply irresponsible - if you break a working system then it is your > damn responsibility to get it working again, and not to complain about > others not following your command. (The "you" here being meant generally > - I know that you, Igor, were not involved.) > > I have added the following to the "Proposed features" page but I fear > I'm fighting windmills here: > > "Please note: OpenStreetMap software is designed and maintained by > individuals. They may or may not follow or like new feature proposals. > Do not expect that just because something passes a vote, it will > automatically show up in map renderings or influence routing. This is > true especially if you intend to change a hitherto working tag schema > into something else; the makers of maps and software will not > necessarily view this as an improvement, and unless you get their buy-in > beforehand, your change might actually worsen the OpenStreetMap user > experience. A majority of 5 or 10 or 50 votes out of tens of thousands > of contributors does not put you in a position to demand something from > software makers. If the success of your proposal depends on changes to > software, either find people who will do it for you or do it yourself." > > Bye > Frederik > > -- > Frederik Ramm ## eMail [EMAIL PROTECTED] ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" > > _______________________________________________ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk > _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
