Thanks for your comment and for checking things!

I will check what I exactly did. From what I understand, this is a telescope and not a building. Not everything that has been built is a building. If we agree that this is a building, it needs to be tagged such that a consumer interested in buildings is not considering this a building. Do you happen to have a photo of this structure?

I didn’t remove the feature. I only removed the building tag. But I will check again.

Hi,

the buildings you have mapped do not seem to match the imagery at all. Your buildings drawn are not rectangles while the imagery suggests so. You need to carefully review your mapping. The data created this way is not very useful.

Cheers

Danke fuer den Hinweis. Ich hatte Pic4Review ausprobiert und da ist wohl etwas schiefgegangen. Dass dieser bloedsinnige Wert gesetzt wurde, war mir nicht klar. Werde das gleich korrigieren.

Hi,

You can nicely see the too tall buildings here:

https://osmbuildings.org/?lat=43.75733&lon=7.29973&zoom=15.2&tilt=30

Hi,

first of all, thanks for the height import in Nice. This is very helpful for me because we estimate the floor space of each building from the building polygon and the height (either in meters or in number of stories). This data is used for risk assessments for natural catastrophes (e.g. earthquakes).

I have been looking into the results of this import so far and I found a small region in the northeastern part of the import area where apparently something must have gone wrong. Please see this area:

osm.org/#map=16/43.7590/7.3039

On our website, on which we display the floor space per building, you can see that the majority of the buildings have too large floor spaces (red color). I have checked several of them and they report heights of more than 400m, which I have to assume is wrong. See our display (please be patient, it is slow):

http://www.openbuildingmap.org/#zoom=17&lat=43.76105&lon=7.30284&layers=B00FFFFTFFF

Again, your contribution is great and I hope to see more of this data coming to OSM.

Cheers

Hi,

Thanks for the long comment and the good discussion evolving. I think that in general we are debating several issue that are intertwined: the usage of a road, its width, and the rendering. This combined with the usage of a square. In addition to this, this discussion is about Venice, which is very particular in the sense that cars are not allowed anywhere (we both know the exceptions but you're getting my point). So even the wider roads will not see any car traffic, not even for goods delivery in off-times. From the usage point of view everything should be a footway, even the squares. From the view point of rendering, it seems that people prefer the pedestrian tag (no judgment here). In terms of width, some of the larger roads have been mapped as areas, clearly indicating the width. However, most roads do not carry any width information. It is true that a too narrow road cannot accommodate car traffic and, by logic, must be a footway. However, this logic is incomplete when ignoring the fact that even the larger roads will not see car traffic ever and thus should also be considered footways, albeit wide ones. This includes the many squares.

Having said this, I think it would be best to think about a three types of roads: footways that can only be used by people because they are too narrow, footways that could potentially be used by vehicles (like Strada Nova), and pedestrian ways that allow car traffic under some conditions (e.g. delivery). An important aspect of this new tagging should be the respective rendering. As of now, the rendering for combining footways with pedestrian areas looks horrible and I understand people trying to avoid it. To ensure correct routing, pedestrian ways need to be added to squares connecting the access points, resulting in half-circles at any connection to footways. This is certainly unfortunate as is the strong color contrast between gray pedestrian squares and light red dotted footways. The dotted footways suggest some small connecting paths but a major (even if narrow) access road to a square. To make a long story short, I think we need to have a rendering of whatever emerges as tagging in Venice that pleases the eye and makes the map more readable than the combination of red dotted ways with gray squares. an aspect not discussed yet is also the importance of roads. In many cases, very narrow footways are parts of the main arteries through Venice and rendering them as red-dotted footways does not provide the correct image. Therefore, the importance of roads has been rendered in different colors ignoring the physical properties of the roads.

In summary: I agree that something should happen and that tagging in Venice can be improved. But let us first address all open issues. What about creating a wiki page to collect the ideas and requirements? This may be a better tool than this changeset discussion.

Hi again and thanks for the long answer. Yes, I was stating it wrongly: You did start a discussion and this is good. However, it seemed that you jumped to conclusions before the discussion really had time to evolve. But, yes, I support improving the map and it is great that you do this when traveling. Venice needs more mapping for sure.

Regarding the "emerged" standard: I guess I'm trying to say that whoever mapped in Venice has used pedestrian as value for any way in town. This is the "standard" and admittedly it does not match entirely with what the wiki says. I fully agree with you here. However, having said this, your arguments about why to use footway/pedestrian does not match with the wiki either. The wiki does not mention the width of a way as criterion but only the usage pattern. Therefore, I think I'm correct to say that the squares in Venice need to be footways too if we decide to follow this logic. This, of course, would demand a full retagging of Venice and the squares would not be rendered in a useful way anymore. I assume (no proof at all for this) that this is the reason why people decided to use pedestrian.

So, before your recent edits, the map was consistent at least, even if not fully in line with the wiki. Now it is inconsistent
because in some areas we have a lot of footways. And, again, we have a pedestrian square that can only be reached by footways, which is inconsistent with the wiki (regarding the usage pattern) and with what I call the "emerged" standard in Venice. Also, the wiki states that pedestrian is used for roads while footway is used for paths. I think it is fair to say that even very narrow roads in Venice are roads. Venice is a very particular city as you know and some of the ways you tagged as footway are definitely not so narrow that anybody in Venice wouldn't consider them a normal Venetian road.

I hope you can see my point. I will definitely not start an edit war with you and revert your changes. I would prefer, you would return the tags to pedestrian, but if not, so be it. But in this case, how should we proceed? Should we extend the discussion to the English tagging list? Should we work on a better rendering style so that footways and pedestrian squares blend together?

I find the current situation not satisfactory. Let's do something to improve it.

Cheers

I find it slightly disturbing that you continue editing against an emerged standard without waiting for a discussion to take place. The fact that all ways so far have been tagged as pedestrian and I also agree with this approach signals that your opinion is standing against this and that there is a conflict. I'm not claiming that "we" are right but these conflicting ideas should be discussed before introducing inconsistencies in the map. Are you going to start an edit war if people revert your changes?

You said "I think I am improving consistency by applying these changes." I wrote in my comments that I disagree with this notion as long it is not discussed. Again, why should it be acceptable to have squares tagged as pedestrian while all ways leading to it are footways? You introduced such a case yourself. This can hardly be considered "improving consistency".

Bottom line: why do you object a bigger discussion before changing things that have emerged as standard?

Hi,

I'm also quite often in Venice. I agree that many squares were mapped very incompletely leaving the border around them. I have spent a lot of time fixing those and I will continue doing so (like with the canals: Castello and Cannaregio are finished and San Marco in good shape...).

I still see a serious problem in mapping ways as footways and squares as pedestrian. This in particular because no vehicle can reach the pedestrian square if only footways lead to it. This is not consistent.

I see your point though. However, I can spot areas that you have started to change and I find this very unfortunate. Let us rather reach out to the wider community and discuss this issue to reach a conclusion that takes into account the definitions and the rendering. Otherwise, the result will either be an inconsistent map or you have to change everything which I would consider a mechanical edit against an emerged standard.

So, why not reset everything to pedestrian first and start a larger discussion? I think, the map of Venice has bigger problems than this type of road classification.

Enjoy Venice!

I see your point. However, Venice remains a very special case. There is essentially no car traffic. Also, it seems to me that local communities do stretch global definitions (e.g. Japanese road classifications).

Another aspect that I like about the pedestrian tagging is that all the little or larger squares can be tagged as area (which doesn't work for footways) and so the gray color of the pedestrian roads nicely blends into the squares. Admittedly, this is considering the renderer but I find this type of rendering very helpful when navigating through Venice. How would you tag squares in Venice so that the area becomes visible. Using pedestrian for them is likewise wrong following the wiki. I guess this is why everybody uses pedestrian. Anyway, a bad standard is better than no standard and the map of Venice really looks good..

Having said this, let's see what the Italian community decides. Probably this type of footways should be not be rendered with red dots so that areas and way merge nicely into each other.

But I don't think you're doing anybody a favor by now starting to re-tag some ways in Venice. I suggest to revert everything to pedestrian to keep the (maybe bad) standard and first reach a conclusion with the local community.

Thanks for looking into things carefully. However, I disagree with you. I have followed what the Italian/Venetian community have decided. They use for essentially all ways in Venice the tag highway=pedestrian and my changes were not debated for more than 2 years. I'm rather surprised that you started to change this tagging scheme that has been stable in the past years. I suggest you revert your changes to pedestrian. If you disagree with me, it would be best to reach out to the Italian/Venetian community instead of starting to re-tag all of Venice.