If they all had the same speed limit, barring some exceptions, you could tag the exceptions, and then use JOSM to find the remaining streets to tag in one go.

In an ideal world, every way would have a maxspeed value. We don't live in an ideal world, though. You can probably get away with omitting them on residential strets, but on the major streets and other roads they're more important for routers to be able to override their (often horribly optimistic) assumptions.

They're false-positives. One of them referred to an admin boundary that isn't and shouldn't be joined, and the other appears to refer to a land-use polygon. Could have been someone saying "my house number is wrong". Alternatively, it could have been someone mis-clicking on the MapDust map.

The one I pegged as completely useless was an "Other" category report, with no supporting comment, without a proposed or actual route. I would think it would probably be better if these never got through in the first place. There may also be issues with Skobbler's rendering, since I've closed two reports claiming missing miniroundabouts which were on the map for at least a year before the report was filed.

alexz+1. Ugly rendering is ugly. Don't change the data to make it more beautiful. I had someone down my way remove a car park because they thought that the fact that it was a private car park wasn't evident in the rendering.

Consistency ftw.

The contours on OCM are pretty rough. They're taken from SRTM, which is decent enough for basic consumption, but of no real use for deriving stuff from. Unfortunately, it's the best free source out there for our neck of the woods. OS Landform Panorama may or may not give better resolution, but it's more-or-less abandoned.

For anyone outside the profession, a straightforward response refusing their authority should be enough to send them on their way. If I were challenged by some cartographic body in my neck of the woods because I drew someone a diagram giving directions, I'd tell said body where to go.

I strongly suspect that a licensing body deciding by itself to expand its own scope in such a manner is beyond their powers, and demanding a licence for such a broad range of activity could be unconstitutional in the US. It would be like the General Medical Council saying that I can't apply a sticking plaster to my own finger after a paper cut.

Mongol Rally? Good luck to you - I've heard it's a tough trip, but a great experience. Make sure the co takes notes along the way. :)

If it walks like a National Park and talks like a National Park, then it's a National Park. :-)

Put less obtusely, if the primary difference between these and National Parks is the body in charge or who they report to (i.e. they are otherwise protected areas with planning restrictions, access limitations, etc.), then tag them in the same manner with appropriate operator=.

Or, we could just do it per way as we do now. Just sayin'.

One of our strengths is that our data is human-readable and human-writable, mostly without side effects. Complex interactions such as this are asking for trouble IMO.

I think you'll have to explain the joke for those of us who aren't on your localhost ...

That map looks a bit empty. If there's two things that go together well, it's an empty patch of map and an enthusiastic new mapper. It's a good sign that it won't stay empty for long. :-)

Remember that anything and everything you do can be undone, so don't worry about messing up or doing things the "right" way - there are lots of "right" ways and not many "wrong" ones. Jump in, and have fun.

Wild guess: allows the paging code to present the most recent tracks first, even if they were uploaded out of order.

Taking road class into account means that when the trunk/primary through town has a speed limit of 50mph on mostly-straight roads while the unclassified country lane with lots of tight bends and steep hills falls under the national limit of 60mph, the router keeps you on the main road.

If the router takes speed into account but none is specified, it will have to make assumptions about the speed which may not make sense. Check the routes to see if they have maxspeed= values set, and if they match the actual speed limits on the ground.

It's nice to see something in the diary that mentions the licensing situation and isn't a lengthy diatribe on how the new terms are evil, OSMF are agents of Satan, and that tainted contributions debar you from pressing the magic button, etc. ad naus. (Coincidentally, this is why I refuse to subscribe to the mailing lists.)

Could be worse, I suppose. My favourite such story is that of the residents of a street that was historically the boundary between two settlements, and consequently got separate numbering for each side. The residents of Nos. 3 generally end up exchanging misdelivered mail at least once a week.

The openptmap method seems to work nicely - though the stylesheets aren't provided. I've not tried asking the author yet, though here is a small-scale test with a very basic stylesheet based on partial transparency. I have this in a small area (not much more than that imaage depicts) using a stripped-down dataset. Have some plans, but main obstacles are lack of resources and compiling the stylesheets (I'm frankly amazed anyone's had the patience to get the main OSM stylesheet to where it is).

Speaking of odd boundaries: "London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Hertfordshire, England"

The comment you responded to claimed: "It is not allowed to copyright public knowledge [...]" I suspect you have simply misunderstood this and that the author meant "public knowledge" literally. While what you say is true, the copyright extends only to the written and published material - it does not extend to the underlying facts and ideas (Donoghue v Allied [1938] Ch 106).

@chillly: You most certainly can not claim copyright on common knowledge. This also applies to the Crown.