Why was this downgraded to trunk? This is a divided, high-speed (65 mph), grade separated, fully access controlled highway (a.k.a. a freeway) which is exactly the definition for "highway=motorway" (osm.wiki/Tag:highway%3Dmotorway)

Hi Sebastien,

This changeset removed an import of USFS surface ownership that I had added many years ago. I agree that the visualization it produced is useful, which is why I added it in the first place. However, I ultimately decided to remove it for a number of reasons:

- I did not follow import guidelines per: osm.wiki/Import/Guidelines. While I am fairly certain this data is in the public domain, there still needs to be community buy-in and process documentation, neither of which I had done. If you wish to propose to add this data to talk-us, I can certainly help with the technical end. However, I am not convinced a majority will be on board here.

- The data itself hadn't been fully cleaned up. There were lots of excessive nodes, noisy areas, and it added to the massive problem of boundary misalignment already present in this area from previous imported data. Maintainability is always an issue for imports.

- Many of the areas blanket tagged "landuse=forest" didn't actually have managed forest land on them, making the tagging inaccurate in many places.

I plan on eventually working the data back in smaller, more accurate, and more manageable pieces. However, I do this as a hobby and it is quite time-consuming work. I am aware (and appreciative as a mountain biker!) of the work TDLT does in the area and also plan to soon add their holdings as nature reserves. Many of their holdings I have added already. I will try to add the SPI checkerboard conservation easements & corresponding natural work soon which will help bring back some of the missing visual information here. Let me know if you have any other questions; I will stick to changeset comments with this in case there are others curious as well.

For reference - this has been corrected with 61179606 and 61179535

The 'ref=NV 647' is incorrect through most of downtown Reno. Please see https://www.nevadadot.com/home/showdocument?id=4438 (page 197), you may also verify the lack of state route signage on-the-ground east of McCarran.

Why were all these roads upgraded to primary? Most of these roads are minor rural arteries that don't connect any major cities or carry any cross-country level traffic.

The trunk classification here was correct, by both the 'expressway' and 'most important' definition. Seconding that this should _not_ be secondary.

The changes were as listed above, I can't give exact details since I'm on vacation and won't be at my computer for another day or two. If you want the exact changes you might use the Revert plugin for JOSM on this changeset to pull the old data into one layer and the current dataset in another layer to compare between the two.

I'm only asking that you try to stick to established tagging guidelines, when they exist, in the context that this project is first and foremost a global geospatial database, and a slippy map second. Smudging things here and there so it shows up a bit better on the slippy map corrupts the consistency of the data.

More practically, I personally wouldn't have a problem with some of the more important towns that act as service hubs for the area being 'village's but tagging them as 'town's is (in my opinion) obviously incorrect given the definitions in the tagging guidelines. But, you are always free to tag as you wish and I will respect your decisions since you know the area much better than I do.

I would encourage you to search for a pending ticket, or open an issue ticket yourself on https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto regarding that issue if you feel it is a problem. Hamlets *do* render on osm-carto, but only at high zoom level. Maybe you can make a case for lower level rendering. However, this is also a GIS database not just for northern California, but for the entire world, and I suspect most people will argue that a town of 60 people is not significant enough to be shown at low zoom. If every settlement of population greater than 50 was shown at low zoom, the map would be completely cluttered with name labels.

Alleghany still does not come close to meeting the definition for "place=town" as it is not by any stretch of the imagination "an important urban centre larger than a village and smaller than a city". The 2010 census lists 58 people living in Alleghany. Even if you were to double both the population and the amount of services available in Alleghany, it would still slot squarely into 'place=hamlet', defined as "A smaller rural community, typically with fewer than 100-200 inhabitants, and few infrastructure." Even Truckee just barely makes the cutoff for 'place=town', and it is larger than nearly all the towns (how you and I say, not the tag) within this changeset boundary combined.

My suspicion is that your motivation for this tagging choice is to see the name labels show up on lower zoom levels of the map (osm.wiki/Tagging_for_the_renderer). If this is the case I can certainly sympathize, because the standard renderer is biased towards dense areas and significantly under-represents most of rural USA even when tags are used correctly. However, this is a problem with the renderer, not with the tagging or database itself. If this is the case for you, I would consider proposing some ideas to the osm-carto group: https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto.

If you don't like the name scheme for the 'place' tags or the way they are applied in the U.S. (also legitimate issues with OSM that I share), try starting a thread for discussion on the Talk-us (https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us) or Tagging (https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging) mailing lists. Many of the most experienced and knowledgeable OSM contributors actively read and post on these lists, and would be more than happy to debate about these issues.

In either case, applying tags vastly out of the consensual norms for their use will simply see these changes reversed, if not be me, then by someone else eventually.

Likewise, I personally would refer to Grass Valley as a city and Sweetland as a town as well if I were discussing them with others. However, the title you and I (and others, and even the governments themselves) would give to these places does not necessarily correspond to the correct 'place=' tag, since the names of the values for the 'place=' are mostly arbitrary. These values could just as well have been 'place=2a' (etc), but 'place=village' is a bit easier to remember. We don't really use the word "village" or especially "hamlet" to describe places in the U.S., but that is beside the point because the names of the tags are arbitrary.

The tags used for 'place=' have long standing consensus and clear enough definitions to determine that a place like Forest cannot possibly be tagged as 'place=town', since this tag has emerged by being defined as "an important urban centre that is larger than a place=village, smaller than a place=city, and not a place=suburb". Forest, as well as many of the other places that we might describe as "towns", do not have a "good range of shops and facilities which are used by people from nearby villages" (osm.wiki/Tag%3Aplace%3Dtown).

I would agree that the blanket tagging of any smaller community in the U.S. as 'place=hamlet' is incorrect, but this is mostly an artifact of these markers being from a GNIS import that doesn't use a tagging scheme with one-to-one conversion with OSM. These smaller communities absolutely need reviewing, and I am very happy to see this happening, but I would encourage you to tag these places by finding the most nearly correct description in osm.wiki/Key:place, then tag with the corresponding value - not just for the 'place=' tag, but for all tags.

If we don't keep tag usage relatively uniform, despite personal opinions, then they become meaningless to the database. I don't personally care much for the 'highway=trunk' == "expressway" definition. But, since this is more or less convention for the tag across most of the country and the world, it is the way I try to use the tag as well.

Hi NorCalRoads,
I noticed that you have bumped up many small population centers in the northern Sierras up to 'place=town' rather than 'place=hamlet', etc. Please note that the values for the 'place' tag do not necessarily correspond with what you or I would call a "town".

Per osm.wiki/Key:place, 'place=town' is for "An important urban centre, between a village and a city in size". This tag is more applicable for somewhere like Grass Valley, which has a decent population and a full set of public services but isn't quite a 'city' with a dense urban core. It is not applicable for something like Sweetland, which is no more than a couple houses and a small market.

I'm not sure if it's still under construction; I am assuming so since the user that added these roads put them inside a construction site. Constructed or not, I suppose the new road should be connected to Grande Ave. since it will be at some point, and whether or not it is accessible can be handled with 'access' tags.

Why was this added? I can confirm absolutely that there is no freeway being constructed here, and no documentation anywhere to suggest that one has been proposed either.

This convention is based off signage observable on other CA expressway/freeways with point at-grade intersections. See CA 70 & Kempton Rd., CA 99 & Sankey Rd. for similar examples.

Whoops, thanks for catching that! I have corrected the mistake.

Whoops, sorry about that. Should have it fixed tonight!
Bradley

Whoops, sorry about that! I've updated JOSM so it shouldn't be a problem again, thanks for letting me know.

Hi Phil,
Road classification in OSM can be deceptively tricky - the trunk/primary/secondary/tertiary/unclassified system is built around the U.K. road network, and unfortunately it tends to line up awkwardly with U.S. roads which use something more like a major/minor highway/arterial/collector kind of system.

A tertiary road should have some kind of navigational importance, albeit a minor one. If I had to point to some of the roads I am most confident around here being labelled tertiary, roads like Mesa Park, Las Brisas, Kings Row, Wedekind, Neil Rd. around Peckham come to mind. Unclassified is a better choice for roads in commercial or industrial districts that provide access to properties, but aren't used for through navigation.

If you have any questions at all about this topic, don't hesitate at all to contact me. Thanks for the work you have been doing as well, it's rare to have contributors in the U.S. with the attention to detail you're showing.

Bradley

Hi THolt, I noticed that this changeset deleted a part of US 31/41/431 (James Robertson Pkwy/Main St) where it bridges over the Cumberland River, was this intentional?