I surveyed it today and I think it’s more like surface=rubber than surface=tartan, so I changed it to that in osm.org/changeset/160170824

Handy photo! The wiki page for basketball suggests that a node is the correct way to map this (see osm.wiki/Tag:sport%3Dbasketball#Court_without_markings), although perhaps it should be one node per practice hoop, rather than one for the entire paved area? Potentially also add hoops=1 to each node to make things clearer (see osm.wiki/Key:hoops)?

I’ll add a note to the map to promote a re-survey and hopefully someone will go and take another closer at the surface soon.

Yes, there is a bit of a fundamental tension here. Data consumers want a restricted set of well-defined values for things, but unfortunately the real world has a long tail of odd ways of building things which won’t fit within that set. For an area like Lancaster which has had a reasonable amount of QA done on its map already, the rare surface values that remain are probably there for a good reason.

Personally I think that MapRoulette tasks like this one should only be used to fix obvious typos in surfaces. Anything more than that needs an in-person survey to check what the original mapper meant with their tagging. It can be quite hard to decide between “was the original mapper aware of this other, more standard, surface tag, and they deliberately didn’t choose it for some reason; or were they unaware of it and would have used it if they’d known about it?”.

There’s some discussion of this topic on the wiki: osm.wiki/Any_tags_you_like

Anyway, thanks again for your work on improving the map. I see a number of your MapRoulette edits in the area I’m interested in, and most of them have been obvious and welcome improvements. :D

I would read that page as meaning ‘tartan’ can be used as a generic name for all branded running/athletics surfaces — but this is a multi-use games area. Its surface could as easily be acrylic, plastic or perhaps clay.

Heya, did you survey this in person? I remember trying quite hard to find a suitable surface value when I surveyed it, and as far as I remember, tartan wasn’t suitable. It was a while ago though

Thanks! :D

Yeah, I think those notes are only visible in MapRoulette — all others see on OSM is the text on osm.org/changeset/160068625, unless they follow the MapRoulette link. I agree, it’s a bit of a pain to keep the two in sync!

Thanks for your quick reply. When you submit your edit, you should be given an opportunity to change the suggested changeset comment — if you couldn’t complete the MapRoulette task (because the basketball area was obscured by trees or whatever) then it would be helpful to others to edit the changeset comment and say so — otherwise when others review your changeset, they get confused by the fact you say you’ve converted a basketball court node but the contents of the changeset doesn’t match that. Thanks :)

Hiya, this edit doesn’t appear to have anything to do with graveyards, it appears to be adding a culvert to Boundary Stream. Please make sure your changeset descriptions are accurate — see osm.wiki/Good_changeset_comments, thanks :)

Hiya, this edit doesn’t appear to have anything to do with basketball pitches — what were you trying to do? Thanks

Yeah I asked on the original changeset (osm.org/changeset/159701793) which marked it as disused, but didn’t get an answer.

Maybe leave it until the next issue of the bus timetables and see whether the stop gets removed?

Or see if there’s anything obvious in local media about what’s happening.

No worries, glad to help get things sorted. Feel free to leave a note on the map or message me (osm.org/message/new/gurglypipe) if you find any further problems around your local area.

I’ve updated the note on the toilet and checked that it’s tagged as only being for customers to use.

Thanks again for your help!

OK, thanks for the confirmation. I’ve changed the tagging in osm.org/changeset/159957219 — if you want to take a look at it and confirm it matches the state of things, I think we should be done here.

As I said, it’ll take several weeks for the changes to percolate down to people’s apps. Unfortunately there’s no way round that.

One follow-up question: currently there are some customer toilets mapped in the building just south of the path. There’s a note on them asking to confirm their location — are you able to confirm whether they’re in that building or whether they’re somewhere else around the farm? It would be nice for me to be able to get that sorted while you’re here!

Thanks again

Thanks for your reply, and thanks for helping your neighbours out, that’s kind.

(For anyone else reading along, this is in reply to osm.org/changeset/159776098#c1355574)

You have managed to edit the map successfully, but I have re-edited the tagging since, as the tags you’d chosen didn’t match the description you’d given of the issue.

Previously you said the path running along the south side of the tea garden is for the owners and customers. That implies that foot=customers is the appropriate tagging. In your message now you say that it’s private and not open to anyone (except presumably the owners), which would suggest foot=private is appropriate.

Both foot=customers and foot=private should prevent walking apps from routing people along the path by default, but in any case it will likely take a few weeks to a few months for all the apps to update — they only periodically re-download their data from OSM (and other sources) to update their maps. So unfortunately any change we make to fix this in OSM will take some time to trickle down to users.

Additionally, the tagging informal=yes relates to whether a path is planned, rather than whether it’s a public right of way. A good example of informal=yes would be a path which cuts the corner on a playing field (see osm.wiki/Tag:informal%3Dyes). So from what you say, I don’t think this path is informal (in the OSM sense).

So, to sum that up: if the path is meant to be used by customers (but not the public), it should be foot=customers. If it’s only meant to be used by the owners (and not customers or the public), foot=private. I would suggest removing informal=yes in any case, and unfortunately whatever we do here will take several weeks to trickle down to users of walking apps. But it will get there in the end.

Let me know if that makes sense, and I can make the appropriate changes and double-check things with you. Ta

And this is an improvement?

Now you’ve put a kink in Water Street too.

If the LCN tagging is not continuous, split ways and add more lcn=yes tags. There’s no need to change geometry or change cycleway links to do that.

Those cycleway links were in place because the span of a cycleway as it crosses into a road carriageway is clearly different from the cycleway as it continues outside the carriageway. Hence the separate tagging and separate way.

I still think these would be more accurately represented as crossing=traffic_signals (as there are *traffic* signals here), but Pete Owens will revert that change if I make it. At least adding button_operated= and crossing:signals=no makes things a bit clearer.

crossing:signals=shared from osm.wiki/Proposal:Crossing_signalization would make things clearer still, but that tagging is still a proposal.

Please explain how this is an improvement on how the map was before.

The road now has a big kink in it, which doesn’t exist in reality.

The cycle path now also has a big kink in it, which doesn’t exist in reality. By having it tagged as cycleway=link, the misalignment between the cycleway in the map and on the ground was at least communicated to the consumer of the map before, as cycleway=link is explicitly only for routing purposes.

Instead of summarily deleting my work on the cycle path on Chapel Street, it would be politer for you to talk to me about it. Otherwise whatever difference of opinion we have about the tagging guidelines won’t ever be resolved.

Retagged using lifecycle prefixes (osm.wiki/Lifecycle_prefix) in osm.org/changeset/159843988.