This turned out rather long. Summary: "smoothness" is a useful tag, though the wiki definition may be lacking. Thanks for reading.
On Nov 27, 2008, at 11:27, Dave Stubbs wrote: > The table is full of such subjective assessments: can I roller blade > on it. No, I can't. It doesn't help that I can't roller blade at all. > So sure, if the tag was, "is it possible to roller blade down this > road assuming a skill level of a Grade III Roller Blading Proficiency > Award?" then it might have a point, but it's not. How about: "Would an average roller blader like to use this?" Personally, I couldn't care less for an absolutely precise and objective definition for a tag. If the description gives a good idea of how to use the tag in most situations, that's perfect. There'll always be corner cases. It's quite possible that people have tried too hard to define "smoothness" objectively (and have claimed too strongly that it's even possible to define it 100% precisely). Here's how I see smoothness (on the smooth side of things, I don't care about things beyond bad). If the people that formulated the smoothness proposal disagree, I guess that proves your point. excellent: this is what well paved new cycle ways tend to be like; some fine type of asphalt; good for roller-skating, a pleasure on a road bike good: your typical road in good state; a cycleway like above but with some small bumps from tree roots because they didn't care to put a proper foundation (?) underneath; a high-quality non-paved footway in a park intermediate: a road the has been worn down and could use a new cover, some unevenness from heavy traffic; motorway made of slabs of concrete with annoying bumps when passing to a new slab (you'd really want to use the fast lane exclusively if that's recently been repaved); lots of tree root induced bumps on a cycleway; a footway in a park with coarser gravel or uneven enough that there'll be puddles when it rains; high-quality cobblestoned road (small stones with flat surface, or perhaps some filling of the gaps); the average motorist wouldn't mind, the average cyclist wouldn't complain (at least not loudly), you wouldn't want to skate here. Anything worse, I'd tag "bad" for now and put a note/fixme in so someone else can say how bad it really is. I think "smoothness" fits the above distinctions quite well. Together with surface=paved/unpaved, it should provide most information about a way's surface that users of wheeled (on-road) vehicles would like to have when deciding which road to choose. Cheers Robert _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk