Changeset: 28238776
[Castello] - ways and riverbanks improved
Closed by osm-sputnik
Tags
created_by | JOSM/1.5 (7906 en) |
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source | Bing, knowledge |
Discussion
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Comment from dieterdreist
This changeset set footways to pedestrian which are true footways judging by width. This only makes the map less readable and useful, please revert
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Comment from osm-sputnik
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.
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Comment from dieterdreist
thank you for your reply. I am indeed reaching out to the Italian mailing list because I believe it is a very bad decision to tag whatever way as pedestrian highway, a tag that is globally defined. Basically this questionable decision is completely removing any highway hierarchy in Venice and leading to bad results for all data consumers, particularly rendering. It is against any common sense to add a 50cm wide way as pedestrian road. I don't believe it is possible for a local community to distort and stretch the meaning of globally used highway tags so much as it is in this case.
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Comment from dieterdreist
I agree that this is not referring to you particularly.
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Comment from osm-sputnik
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.
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Comment from dieterdreist
if I ever will go to Japan, I guess I will complain about their highway classification as well, Venice is simply much more important for me (I'm going there sometimes and am living in Italy).
I think pedestrian + area=yes is not comparable to pedestrian as a linear way. I do not complain for it being used for all the small squares (and believe it is in line with the wiki and common practice), quite the opposite: many of them aren't mapped yet, and those that are have often mapped their topology wrong (they do not share borders with the surrounding buildings but leave a "gap of undefinition"/suggest to have something between them and the buildings. This is another frequent problem with the mapping here (I'm in Venice at the moment).
The question of the red dots (or gray in case of private streets and alleys) is a decision of the ism-carto rendering style, which might or not change in the future.
Regarding your comments on the local community: I guess it is quite small (judging from the state of the map and contributions to talk-it, and also from the replies to my post regarding the pedestrian problem), maybe there's noone or max. a handful actually from Venice, the rest has been mapped by tourists and people from the region but not really local to the historic city
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Comment from osm-sputnik
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!
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Comment from dieterdreist
there is no consistency in my eyes if 50cm wide passages where not even 2 pedestrians can pass each other are mapped the same as a some meter wide road. All my changes are the result of surveys I have been doing the past days and I do believe they improve the map so I will not revert them. I think I am improving consistency by applying these changes.
If there's no wide enough way leading to a square it will indeed be impossible for vehicles to reach them, also in reality (typically you won't see vehicles in most of venetian land based ways anyway), but footway in general doesn't automatically imply no vehicle can go there (bicycles and motorcycles might be (exceptionally) permitted by access tags or might ignore legal restrictions, emergency vehicles could pass anywhere where space is sufficient, etc.)
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Comment from osm-sputnik
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?
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Comment from dieterdreist
I do not object to discussions, rather the opposite, I have started one with you and on the national italian mailing list, where I have also asked about local mappers. It just doesn't look as if there is anything like a community of Venetian mappers. People on the Italian mailing list said Venice was still recovering from the license change in 2012, 5 years ago.
Don't worry, I won't continue mapping in Venice now, I was there for some days and used the time to do on the ground surveys and mobile mapping, but have left the city now. I couldn't wait to do this because I knew I would be leaving soon, and I didn't want to waist the time there without having the map benefitting from on the ground verification and modification.
As to the "emerged standard", I will repeat what I have already written above: the emerged standard for highway =pedestrian is that it describes a road. Most of the ways in Venice with this tag aren't roads in any sense, they are very narrow footways with no vehicle traffic whatsoever. Area=yes with highway=pedestrian are highway areas of any kind and size of squares, there is absolutely no problem if these are accessible only by footways, and there is no consistency problem at all if this is the actual situation on the ground, if you believe it is then please explain why.
highway=footway with area=yes would not make any sense semantically, so it is right IMHO that carto osm doesn't support it. -
Comment from osm-sputnik
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
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Comment from dieterdreist
Hello Sputnik,
following our discussion there was some discussion on the Italian mailing list, and not for the first time ;-)
I have update the discussion page of Venice to keep trace of this discussion and former discussions about this topic. I am not sure how well you can understand Italian, but just in case, here's the link:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Venezia#Pedestrian_street_or_footway.3F (maybe you can get some clue by employing an online translator if not).
I have also written a message to user:Arlas who apparently was local for some time to Venice (but now is likely not any more). Basically, from what emerged on talk-it, there aren't any active local mappers from the historic centre of Venice, although there are some from the wider region, most of Venice mapping was done by externals. There also doesn't seem to be documentation of this "emerged standard" but in previous discussions, as you can see from the links, there were more people advocating using more than one highway value than there were for using only pedestrian.
Regarding the very narrow streets and ways in Venice, the situation is not so singular as it might seem: there are similar situations in most historic town and village centres in Italy, where accessibility via steps and width de facto prevent vehicles from entering. It is common practice to use footway for this kind of "road". Clearly, calling something a "road" where the width is so narrow that not even two pedestrians can pass, is against common sense and the general understanding of the term "road". These are admittedly even in Venice the minority of ways, but lots are so small that a car would not pass if it could arrive there.
If you have a look at the documentation, highway=pedestrian with area=yes is the common way of mapping any kind of square: "A closed way tagged with highway=pedestrian and area=yes is the common way to map squares and plazas." and there is even specific mention of highway=footway for access: "Often other paths such as highway=footway will connect with the edge of the pedestrian area.", and: "For small paths which are too small for cars to pass (no real streets) use highway=footway instead." from https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dpedestrian
So I don't see any inconsistency with the intended mapping of Venice, I see an inconsistency if we map small paths as highway=pedestrian.
Mapping big roads for pedestrians as highway=pedestrian and small ways for pedestrians as highway=footway is documented and established practice. It makes the map more readable by showing a hierarchy of pedestrian ways (although for the case of Venice there would likely be an advantage of having a third class to get more distinction and to make more sensible renderings in lower zoom levels by hiding unimportant ways earlier). -
Comment from dieterdreist
btw.: you are the only one seriously engaging in a discussion about this, for which I am grateful, but it also illustrates my point that there isn't an active mapping community in Venice (unfortunately).
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Comment from osm-sputnik
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.
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Comment from dieterdreist
Please let's not mix tagging and a specific rendering style (like red dots for footways), but rather focus on the meaning of the tags. The "standard style" rendering is just one rendering of many, and not even the one most people are using (if you look at mobile apps based on OSM data with millions of users, like maps.me).
It is true that there aren't any landbased vehicles like cars in most of the city, but there are handdrawn/pushed pushcarts and barrows, and maybe there are some emergency vehicles besides waterbased ones? I would like to keep the tagging as consistent with the rest of the map as possible (as it is an Italian city I believe it should before all be consistent with other Italian places. Not admitting cars into the historic city is not so special as it might sound, there are other places which have similar limitations, due to spatial constraints).
I suggest we leave this particular changeset discussion and move to the wiki or a mailing list, e.g. tagging or talk-it. In the wiki there is already the Venice page, which is practically dead currently:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Venezia
If things get too long there, we might later move it to a subpage.
Ways (1-20 of 25)
- 1
- 2
- Corte Nova (322937607), v1
- Corte Nova (322937608), v1
- Corte Nova (322937609), v1
- Fondamenta San Giorgio degli Schiavoni (322937610), v1
- 322937612, v1
- 322937613, v1
- 322937615, v1
- 138800839, v4
- 138801848, v4
- 138802367, v3
- 286784080, v2
- Calle Drasi (181632913), v2
- Calle Malatin (181632917), v2
- Calle de la Pietà (181632932), v3
- Calle del Dose (174991104), v4
- Corte Nova (181633012), v3
- Fondamenta San Giorgio degli Schiavoni (181632964), v2
- Fondamenta dei Furlani (314754901), v2
- Salizada de le Gate (322924141), v2
- 138800766, v2
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