Can confirm with boots-on-the-ground experience this morning too... Lots of traffic on WB 4th Ave caught unaware and shunted to SB 10th Street SW after 9:00 am...

Hello Smidster,

No offence, but why would you change the streets in a central business district to "residential"? Other mappers have made these changes before, and every time I've rolled them back. See for example osm.org/way/204201287/history. I've changed that road segment back **three times now**. The last time I commented on my changes: "roads in Downtown Calgary passing by >10-storey office towers could scarcely be considered 'residential'."

Does this seem "residential" to you: https://www.mapillary.com/app/?lat=51.051541861318&lng=-114.07534042028&z=18.81389736801481&pKey=226950208791650&focus=photo ?

Hey Rps333, just as a heads up and a gentle reminder to be careful about resolving notes (especially ones by anonymous authors) without verifying their veracity, "Sussy Baka Amogus Shrine" is just some internet meme junk. Note 3475588 (osm.org/note/3475588) should have simply been resolved with no action.

FYI you erroneously deleted hole names from the River Spirit Golf Club outside Calgary, Alta. (osm.org/#map=16/51.0366/-114.3791). Please be careful with these sorts of automated edits and don't just assume if a golf hole is named that the name is in error. In the case of River Spirit the holes were already tagged with "ref=#" and you effectively just deleted the names, which is confusing because there are three sets of nine-hole courses that are played in different combinations for a full 18-hole round. Someone playing this course needs to know the *name* of the hole they're on, not just the number, because they'll be playing the 1st hole on one course as the 10th hole on their back nine...

I'll update the Canada, Alberta and Calgary pages on the wiki; thanks for the suggestion tastrax. Hopefully this will prevent future misunderstandings by eager mappers from elsewhere who are unaware of our local customs. It's late though, past my bed time; I'll try to get around to it tomorrow or Sunday, if I have time.

Oh thank you for finding all those errors, tastrax. It appears the user TheMundaneDave took it upon himself to change the names in Medicine Hat, because he was blindly following "openstreetmap policy on abbreviations". (e.g. osm.org/changeset/55014900) Someone ought to go fix that.

Oh, tastrax, comments are being added as such a pace that I can't keep up, haha.

As Viajero Perdido mentioned farther up the chain, such is the case in Edmonton as well. Typically across all of Alberta it's pretty safe to say if there's a directional suffix at the end of a road name, it's almost always abbreviated.

It can be quite important, to prevent confusion. For example in Lethbridge, Alberta's fourth most populous city, pay close attention to the names of the roads on the north and south sides of Henderson Park. (osm.org/#map=16/49.6864/-112.7974) The road along the north edge of the park is Parkside Drive S. The road on the south side of the park is South Parkside Drive S. Categorically no Lethbridgian would EVER write the directional suffix out in full, so that it's clear "Parkside Drive South" is not confused with "South Parkside Drive".

Oh and Michael, have you ever stopped to consider that perhaps this is something which doesn't have a Canada-wide consistency for a reason, and that you haven't stumbled across "an issue" because... it's not an issue? I would not presume to know the local naming customs in Victoria or St. John's (nor Saint John; mind the abbreviated and unabbreviated St. and Saint here, it's quite important... ;) ), so as much as I would not apply their customs in Calgary nor would I apply Calgarian customs there.

And as one can see, we're not so stupid as to confuse ourselves and already quite consistently keep this straight: osm.org/#map=19/51.12028/-114.19910

That comment of mine ^above^ was getting to be a little long, so I've split it as follows.

Given all the points I made above, you may be asking yourself, "Okay hoserab, if we shouldn't write the full quadrant names out, why then shouldn't we apply your logic to the street 'type' itself, as in 'St.' instead of 'Street', 'Ave' instead of 'Avenue', etc.?"

Now don't get ol' hoserab here wrong: I do understand and acknowledge there is a certain logic to writing out the 'types' in full. Especially as it concerns "St", which I can see could be easily confused with "Saint" in lieu of "Street". (Witness for example "Saint Matthew Square NE", osm.org/way/174936211)

Actually, the reason why I picked the address 71 Ranchlands Crescent NW to use as an example was because I wanted to acknowledge that using the abbreviations for the street 'type' can be problematic. There is a street nearby Ranchlands Crescent named Ranchlands *Court*. Now according to the City of Calgary addressing system, "Court" should be abbreviated "Co", and "Crescent" should be abbreviated "Cr". If you go searching the Canada Post database they'll instead use "Crt" for Court and "Cres" for Crescent, and that's what's actually written on the street signage in both cases. There are a few "Courts" in Calgary that are (or at least historically were) signed "Ct", which matches neither system! This is precisely why the Alberta Land Titles use the unabbreviated name: to prevent confusion. "Ranchlands Co" or "Ranchlands Crt": I would agree it's best to use the full unabbreviated 'type' so that we're clear it's "Ranchlands Court" and not "Ranchlands Crescent", and so we're not easily confused by "Ranchlands Cr"... which is Ranchlands Crescent, not Court.

Casper, when you write "I would love to see the documentation that hoserab uses to dictate guidelines to others," I presume you mean the local customs. (I already quoted the relevant excerpts from the OSM wiki.)

The 'guideline' that Calgarians would never write out the unabbreviated quadrants in a street name or address? Well old chum that's quite simply *reality*. Documentation? Of the "official" sort, I already mentioned the City of Calgary parcel addressing system (https://www.calgary.ca/development/addressing.html), Alberta Land Titles (http://alta.registries.gov.ab.ca/SpinII/MapIndex.aspx?MapFindType=Address), and the Canada Post postal code database (https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/info/mc/personal/postalcode/fpc.jsf); feel free to peruse them at your leisure. In not one of them will you find an instance of the quadrant being spelled out in full. In fact, give the Alberta Spatial Information System I linked a whirl, go look for an address. Try "71 Ranchlands Crescent Northwest, Calgary". Fill in the fields as follows:

House Number: 71
Street Name: Ranchlands
Street Type: Crescent
Quadrant: Northwest
Municipality: Calgary

Seriously, go try it before you read any further.

* * *

"No results found."

Now go back and change the quadrant field to "NW".

Found a result, didn't it? Now why is it that the full, unabbreviated "Northwest" gives a null result? Quite simply the database was never programmed to look for it, *because no one writes street names with unabbreviated quadrants*. ;)

Minh, I appreciate additional backstory about Vid the Kid's essay, but you misinterpreted why I referenced it. In no way was I insinuating it's gospel, I was merely illustrating that this is an issue which has a history.

With respect to Vid's essay's genesis, and the ultimate consensus reached in Whateversville, Ohio: that's fascinating, but entirely irrelevant. This isn't TIGER data, this isn't Ohio.

As for "folks here coolly arriving at a workable solution", we already have one: the status quo across all of Calgary, wherein the street names always use the two-letter quadrant abbreviations. Because that's customary in Calgary, as explained above. The map is already consistent across the thousands and thousands of named road segments in Calgary. Local mappers are not so incompetent that they don't know the names of their own streets, believe it or not.

to add to my original comment, I also deleted the Eau Claire Plaza pedestrian area, splash park, trash cans and paths which no longer exist (all demolished over the last couple years), changed the path type at the Jaipur Bridge to cycle/foot path (it re-opened in June, 2022), re-jigged the paths around Eau Claire; also moved the old Eau Claire & Bow River Lumber Co. building to its temporary location to the south and added the 1886 Buffalo restaurant at the Sheraton (occupying the space of the old Fionn MacCool's pub).

Ah, but little did you know you Edmontonians are a simpleminded folk who don't know how to name stuff. Ol' Mikey60634 will set you straight, he knows all the official rules.

You're making it sound like local mappers actually know what the heck they're doing and talking about, fellow traveller.

Jeez, I don't know, those local yokels...? :P

Oh I know precisely what you're talking about tastrax, and absolutely "know the hang of it". You're thinking of osm.wiki/Names#Abbreviation_(don't_do_it).

That said, lots of people don't follow that as gospel because it has issues, particularly in North America. See osm.wiki/Talk:Names#Abbreviation_(don't_do_it)_._Abbreviations_on_street_signs! and http://vidthekid.info/misc/osm-abbr.html.

In particular in Calgary, like I said, nobody would write a road name out in a "full, unabbreviated" form. Justification for doing so on the wiki is "Using short forms is a decision of software; i.e., the underlying data should have the full street name. This will allow a renderer, a router or a location finder to introduce abbreviations as necessary." However, it also says "Apart from following the above rules, *you should always enter the full name as it appears on the street name signs*". You won't find a single street sign in Calgary that spells the quadrant suffix out in full. In fact you sometimes will find them without the quadrant, because it's as much or more about wayfinding and spatial orientation within the city of Calgary as it is "the road's name".

The idea that we spell the quadrants out in full because "some software may not be able to deduce what it means" is a bad idea. The argument boils down to a routing engine with spoken directions may say something like "One Avenue 'Swuh'" because it can't figure out that "SW" = "Southwest" when spoken aloud. That said, when spoken aloud, we NEVER use the cardinal numbers, we always use the ORDINALS. "1 Avenue" spoken aloud is "First Avenue", categorically NOT "One Avenue". Conversely it's written with the cardinal "1", not the ordinal "First". One would never say for instance "I'm at the corner of Fourteen Street Southwest and Seventeen Avenue Southwest", one would say "Fourteenth Street and Seventeenth Avenue Southwest"; notice that the quadrant does not bear repeating, as it is the intersection of 14th St and 17th Ave, located in the southwest quadrant of the city.

So... one could just leave well enough alone, safe in the knowledge that the rest of the roads in the entire city of Calgary are already tagged "correctly" with the abbreviated quadrants, or one could take it upon themselves to "fix" road names piecemeal where there is no "fixing" to be done and some local mapper will likely come along later and undo this anyway.

Oh hello again, Michael.

By "fixing" road names it seems you mean that you're simply "unabbreviating" the quadrant suffixes on all named roads in Calgary.

You do know that by convention all street signage and municipal addresses in Calgary always use the two-letter abbreviations, right? The Alberta Land Titles system, the City of Calgary Addressing Bylaw and parcel address database, Canada Post postal codes database... they all use the two-letter abbreviations. You know that even in a colloquial context between Calgarians the quadrant is always written with the two-letter abbreviation, right?

Just making sure you're aware. As a local, it sure would seem silly to write out "Southwest", "Southeast", "Northwest" and "Northeast" in one's address...

That's not how this works, Michael. You can't just unilaterally decide that I don't have permission to "contact you" by these means, or by further messages to talk-ca, and if you decide to refuse to engage in a dialogue about your edits then you're violating some of the basic tenets of what contributing to OSM is all about. And don't blame me for your actions and behaviour. "If you'd been more diplomatic we wouldn't be in this situation"? Grow up.

I have tried repeatedly to get you to explain your changes, and I've been met with a handful of messages about "being accurate" and childish remarks about "being rude to you". Someone questioning and/or disagreeing with what you're doing does not constitute being rude to you.

On the contrary, what you were/are doing is rude. Pot calling the kettle black if there ever was one. Especially after I asked you to refrain from making any further changes pending that broader discussion on the talk-ca mailing list—which you haven't participated in whatsoever other than your opening remark—and summarily ignored by virtue of the very changeset we're commenting on here even existing.

I've tried again and again to explain to you that using a deprecated spelling and insisting on an outdated reference is considered a slap in the face. My comments may have seemed unnecessarily harsh to you, but it's only because you so clearly do not understand the ramifications of what you're doing. You think you're being "accurate"; what you're really doing is being overly reliant on outdated sources and giving deference to sources that could be construed as colonialist and ethnocentric. I can quite clearly see that you believe the changes you're making are innocent and in the name of "accuracy" and "consistency", but you're blissfully unaware that they are actually quite condescending and patronizing, just by virtue of a spelling difference.

As I wrote on the talk-ca list and comments on other changesets of yours, we should always give deference to what local people call things when using the "name" key. By this criterion your search for "accuracy" was in vain: it was already accurate. Similarly, trying to make things "consistent with other local nations and reserves" is operating from the false premise that they need to be treated the same. They don't, and shouldn't be. These are different people with different customs, different languages and different systems of governance. To treat them monolithically as a group is a longstanding grievance most First Nations have with the rest of Canada, and breeds a lot of resentment. For example, your opening message on the talk-ca mailing list innocently asked "How should First Nations reserves be named?" and one of John Whelan's very poignant responses was "Even using the term 'First Nations reserve' may be controversial." I don't think that sank in: that you even call them "reserves" can be construed as insulting. That you even think that all reserve lands need to be mapped in the same way is controversial. As I said before, deference should be given to the "boots-on-the-ground" situation, which is in keeping with the most basic and fundamental naming policy OSM has.

Think very carefully about your future actions. If you persist with continuing to make changes after having been asked to stop and discuss, without stopping and having said discussion, you may be risking your very right to participate in OpenStreetMap going forward.

Now, will you PLEASE stop making changes to the administrative boundaries of the Tsuut'ina Nation and other First Nations/Métis/Inuit lands and contribute to the discussion you yourself started on the talk-ca mailing list?

Thanks in advance...

This may be surprising to *you*, but when someone raises an objection to what you're doing, and you take it upon yourself to start a broader discussion about it, it's considered incredibly rude to cease participating in that broader discussion and just barrel ahead doing whatever the hell it is you wanted to do in the first place.

No one is arguing with you. I've been trying to discuss a matter of particular cultural sensitivity with you, and your refusal to even acknowledge my comments is not appreciated to say the least. Are you going to re-engage and attempt a dialogue, or are you going to be a petulant child?

So you're just going to ignore my comments (osm.org/changeset/129694454), or...?

So are you going to rejoin the conversation on the talk-ca mailing list that you started, or just going to ignore the issues that have been brought up, specifically those I've brought up in relation to the Tsuut'ina Nation? As I asked in one of my previous comments on osm.org/changeset/129596686, is your ultimate end-goal and underlying reason for making these changes because "you feel there ought to be a relation for the land itself and another one for the reserve?" As I said before, it seems pointless and unnecessary here, as the recognized Tsuut'ina Nation lands are comprised of this single reserve.

As I have tried to explain to you several times over, in the case of the Tsuut'ina the name of the reserve lands *is* "Tsuut'ina Nation". The name of the government is "Tsuut'ina Nation". The name of the people is "Tsuut'ina Nation". The Tsuut'ina Nation inhabit the Tsuut'ina Nation, which constitutes the Tsuut'ina Nation.

Don't think I haven't also noticed that you've moved the Wikipedia article for the reserve lands from "Tsuut'ina 145" to "Tsuu T'ina 145", perpetuating the outdated spelling that another Wikipedia editor had previously corrected. I really don't know how else to get this through to you: just because you find (government) sources that read "Tsuu T'ina" does not mean those sources are accurate. They are inaccurate and outdated because they do not read "Tsuut'ina".

Does this make any sense to you whatsoever?