I'll admit I visited the proposal page when the call for votes was first announced here in September. The discussion still seemed unfinished, and I couldn't see me ever using the feature, so then forgot about it. The discussion still seems unfinished but the voting seems to have closed with the key approved, which to me suggests some problem with the process of proposal/discussion/voting/approved or not. Or perhaps I should have just opposed it when the voting opened because it didn't seem ready for people to vote on, and not clear enough what it was for (something I still think is the case). But if it is to do with who easy a hilly road is to drive then smoothness seems a completely misleading choice of word, and it is something I won't need around here unless an artificial hill is built. We have roads that can be driven on, cycleways that can be cycled on, footways that can be walked on and tracks which might or might not be accessible (and then I'd do things like bicycle=yes, car=no or whatever if there was any doubt). I don't *need* smoothness for that. Gradient might be a more useful tag (and for all I know might exist - as I said, no hills around here), as it is not subjective. A road is either steep or it isn't. I don't see how you can use smoothness to say smoothness="ok for a Renault Trafic but I wouldn't try it in a Clio. A Ford Mondeo would probably make it if it has a manual gearbox, but the automatics might struggle on the slippier bits" or something like that. I can't see the proposal working. I've tried, but I can't.
The other issue as has been mentioned here is the template page breaking Maplint. Both sides in the edit war should be careful when editing to ensure that the template uses the same format as is used for all the other Map Features sections. Anyone not doing so will cause problems for many more users who use the Maplint information than the couple of dozen who are discussing smoothness. I'm more concerned about the Maplint tests continuing to work than whether smoothness ultimately ends up on the page or not. Ed _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
