I’d like to share a simple method I’ve devised to map unfamiliar areas outdoors. Suppose you’d like create a GPX track of a park under the following constraints:

• GPS data is inherently inaccurate, so you’d like to walk each path exactly twice to improve accuracy.
• You’d like to finish an the exact point you started.
• You’re in the field, so you want to keep things simple and not use something too complicated.

Since the diary does not allow posting GIFs, the full post is in the community forum.

Achavi’s main use is analyzing changes in an area between two time periods, but it can also analyze changests.

However, for some reason, that feature is not exposed via a graphical UI and requires tinkering with bookmarklets or urls. The Achavi “about” page claims dragging and dropping a changeset URL would analyze it, but this does not seem to work.

I created a simple helper site. Type a changeset ID or URL, and it will be analyzed with Achavi.

Retroactive edit: the helper site is no longer active as of 2025.

I’ve been contemplating the various OSM tagging disputes and disagreements, and I thought of this: If you take 100 regular people to a park with benches, grass, trees, and some gravel paths, and ask them what they’re seeing, they will probably all say “benches, grass, trees, gravel paths”. There would be close to a 100% consensus and no major disputes.

So why is OSM tagging different? Our problem is that the system forces us to categorize those physical objects into abstract, artificially constructed buckets called “keys”, and, naturally, this categorization is subjective and different mappers will want different schemes. Should grass be put in the “landuse” bucket, or the “natural” bucket? Wait, what if a landuse=military has grass? Maybe we should create a new bucket called “landcover” and put grass there? How do we reconcile all that with man_made? What do we do with the prexisting tags? And on and on.

Why not abandon the buckets?

Clearly, many tags do require key=value pairs. e.g. name or website. But these are usually non-physical and non disputed. In our hypothetical eutopia, a node can have both traditional tags and value-only tags. The former are usually abstract, the latter usually physical.

I am well aware this requires API changes. I don’t know if it’s worth it, I know it has shortcomings, and I don’t know if it’s practical any time soon, or ever, but I thought I’d share for the sake of discussion, brainstorming, and so on.

Here are some tagging examples:

format: key=value, key=value … [value, value, value, ….]

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