Hello everybody.

I'm currently in Bangalore, India.
I'm truly amazed by the quality that OSM has already reached here. I didn't think it would be that good.
Virtually all big roads, parks, most of the important sights - it's all there.
Even the residential road (in an area called HSR layout) where the friend that I'm visiting lives - it's there.
The names of smaller roads are often missing though, but so are the road signs.
On Thursday we were in Mysore (west of Bangalore, famous for its palace) which is also quite well covered.

Sure, there is still a lot of work to be done in India and in the cities that I mentioned, especially when you reach the outskirts and certainly when you get to truly rural areas (which I haven't). (Not to speak of agricultural tracks or hiking paths etc., but I think they are much less important than in Europe as people here, as far as I know, rarely go on a leisure tour by bike or foot from their home to some other place, which is the main reason to map these tracks in my opinion.)
POIs are also a rather weak point, even many fuel stations or other important places such as pharmacies, supermarkets and so on are still missing.
This is somewhere where I will make my contribution, but don't hold your breath as I won't get home for another two weeks (staying at the Maldives) and I still have really old trips that I should process first.

Best wishes, especially to the mappers of India!

Markus

Hallo zusammen.

(Dies ist eine Übersetzung des vorherigen Blogeintrags auf Englisch.)
Ich möchte heute einen Appell machen weil ich mehrere Fälle hatte wo das falsch gemacht worden war:
Achtet bitte auf die Unterscheidung zwischen highway=track und highway=path/footway. Die Beschreibung von "path" beginnt mit folgendem Satz: "Ein Weg der nicht für zweispurige Fahrzeuge gedacht ist und für den noch kein spezialisiertes Tag existiert (..." Ich denke damit ist es klar dass highway=path nicht für Wege benutzt werden sollte, die für mehrspurige Fahrzeuge wie Traktoren, Holztransporter etc (oder Autos falls die erlaubt sind) gemacht sind.
Aber genau darum geht's mir, ich habe es jetzt schon oft gesehen dass guten Wege mit Schotter- oder sogar Asphaltoberfläche mit highway=path getaggt wurden. Bei highway=path nehme ich aber an, dass es sich um einen schmalen Pfad handelt, bei dem es gut sein kann dass er für mein normales Fahrrad nicht geeignet ist. highway=track ist aber normalerweise geeeignet und ich kann auch am tracktype sehen ob es ein guter Weg ist oder nicht.

Noch ein Appell weil ich grade dabei bin:
Bitte legt (Wege-)Stummel an sofern das möglich ist. Die helfen anderen Mappern ungemein dabei zu beurteilen ob da noch etwas fehlt oder ob es vielleicht doch eine Verbindung gibt, die nur noch nicht gemappt wurde, wenn da Stummel sind.
Klar, es gibt viele Fälle wo man sie nicht anlegen kann. Wenn man grade mit dem Fahrrad einen Berg runterheizt wird man nicht anhalten um Stummel zu markieren. Wenn man mit dem Auto fährt, ist es schwer, alle Stummel zu erfassen. Das weiss ich alles. Aber manchmal versuchen es die Leute offensichtlich nicht einmal, machen z.B. eine 90-Grad-Kurve nach links aber mappen nicht dass die Straße / der Weg auch noch geradeaus weitergeht.

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Hello everybody.

I want to make a plea today as I've seen several occasions where this was clearly done wrong:
Please be careful with the distinction between highway=track and highway=path/footway. The description of "path" starts with this sentence: "A route open to the public which is not intended for motor vehicles with four or more wheels." So I think it's clear that highway=path should not be used for ways which were made for vehicles such as tractors, wood transporters etc (or cars if they are permitted).
But that's exactly my point, I've seen it many times now that good tracks with gravel or even asphalt surface were tagged as highway=path.
This is an important distinction in my opinion, I'm sure not only for me as a bicyclist. You know, for highway=path I assume it's a narrow path that may well not be suitable for my normal bike, but highway=track usually is and I can see from the tracktype if it's a good track or not.

And another plea while I'm at this topic:
Please make stubs if possible. This helps other mappers so much to judge if there is stuff missing or if there is a chance to find a connection which just isn't mapped yet, if there are stubs.
Sure, there are many occasions when you can't make them. If you're racing downhill with the bike, you're not going to stop to mark a stub. If you're driving by car, it's hard to map all stubs. I know that. But sometimes people obviously don't even try, for example they make a 90 degree left turn but don't map that the road continues straight on, too.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not angry about this or anything. It's better that there is a way mapped at all, without stubs or with the wrong classification, no question. It's just a plea so we will maybe get a better map faster than without people considering these two points.

Thank you very much for reading.

Markus