Most major trails already align well (e.g. PCT, Kungsleden, GR 11, HRP, Massiv Trail, many more). A few still differ:
La traversée des Pyrénées: Wikivoyage uses different sectioning than OSM relations.
Continental Divide Trail: Described by state in Wikivoyage, not matched in OSM.
Appalachian Trail: Described by state in Wikivoyage as well as most hiking guides. Split up by association in OSM. This may not actually provide a continuous trail with sorted ways (see Waymarked Trails).
You’re going to have to consider each one on a case by case basis.
In some case an OSM LDP is split into pieces because part of it (that isn’t really a separate section) also forms part of another LDP, and OSM’s “relation of relations” reflects that. This section of the Wolds Way in Yorkshire shows that. I suggested elsewhere that it’d be possible to accommodate both sets of sections in OSM. Perhaps you’d like a more explicit example though?
In some cases an LDP has defined sections that differ from the defined sections in Wikivoyage, but the ones in OSM are “correct”. In this case Wikivoyage should be aligned with OSM, not the other way around.
In some cases the data that was a source for Wikivoyage won’t be compatible as a source for OSM, and so can’t be used. Note that you cannot copy from Wikivoyage directly (unless there’s an explicit waiver) because the licence is incompatible, but the source that was used to update that may also be compatible with OSM.
I get what you mean. It’s actually really useful for hiking guides to see where trails overlap.
I agree that alignment shouldn’t only go one way. Wikivoyage and OSM can both benefit from each other depending on the situation.
Do you think that kind of licensing issue applies to sections too? I’d be surprised if splitting something like the Appalachian Trail by state would cause any problems.
It’s a bit tough to do this on a case by case basis. If we manage to split these trails up into meaningful sections, we can cover every single one of the most commonly hiked trails in the world on Wikivoyage, which is a quite valuable thing.
That is an example where things will absolutely need to be discussed on a case by case basis.
For the Appalachian Trail, see here, and it might be also useful to have a look at here and here. I suspect that splitting the AT by state would actually match the on-the-ground maintenance situation, but I’m 1000s of miles away and only going on what I have read here, so you really will need to check.
As for licensing, I can only guess that it might do, depending on the copyright regime that the original data was published under, but its complicated.
I’d suggest trying to do one or two initially, involving the local community in each case - perhaps one USA, one European (I’d suggest at least partly in France, because you’ll need to negotiate the issues mentioned here).
Thanks for the info/links! I didn’t know it was this complicated with the licensing. I’ve posted a message in one of the threads you’ve linked. Let’s hope that will do!
Just to address one of the more general questions you mention elsewhere
That sounds like something that you’ll need to address at Wikivoyage - it’ll need to deal with “relations of relations” like (from my previous example) the whole length of the Wolds Way.
sometimes long routes are split by the author into well defined stages, each with their own stage number and canonical „from“ / „to“, and our relations should reflect this structure where available.
A rather extreme example is the sentiero Italia, https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1021025#map=5/42.34/12.15
I also think that Wikivoyage should improve on this side. E.g. wikidata=* is repeated on hundreds of stages because of Wikivoyage (1,2), while superroutes are convenient because you can just add wikidata=* once. This could be avoided if Wikivoyage supported superroutes.
I agree, but I would say it’s outside of the scope of this discussion. If we want to visualize a specific section of a trail, we will still need a wikidata entry for it, or some way to point to this specific section. For the Appalachian Trail, I don’t see that as a possibility, because it’s not separated by state. From the discussion, it sounds like the current way sections are split up is causing issues in multiple ways. See also, Waymarked Trails.
I’ve made an issue for displaying superroutes with a single tag in Phabricator.
Yes, but there is no section of trail in OSM to link it to.
What I’m working towards is creating open source, free, hiking guides on Wikivoyage. I believe this is possible for all of the world’s most commonly hiked trails. A key part of that is visualizing trails using OSM data. For an example of how this can work, see the Pacific Crest Trail guide.
This only works if the OSM trail is split into sections that align with the stages used in the guide. Without that, it is not feasible to display the route clearly. This kind of structure is not just helpful for publishing guides. It directly benefits hikers by reflecting how they actually experience the trail.
There is a gap in this section. For someone viewing the route by segments, that could be confusing. Does it mean they need to skip part of the trail? Take a bus? While a full GPX file might gloss over the issue, it becomes a real problem when relying on section-based data.
I personally use OSM in this way when I hike trails as well. I download the trail, and then set off on a hike.
Yes there is - here. That’s maintained as one section (and the organisation was linked from the web page that I mentioned before). If you want to split that further by state (I think that section covers 3) you’d have to talk to the other people involved so that they don’t get a surprise.
… or the guide is aligned with OSM, if it turns out the OSM is “more correct”.
No, that’s just a different section. If you show all the trail sections it should be obvious.
Yes there is - here. That’s maintained as one section (and the organisation was linked from the web page that I mentioned before). If you want to split that further by state (I think that section covers 3) you’d have to talk to the other people involved so that they don’t get a surprise.
Fair enough, that’s what we’re discussing, splitting trails along boundaries that are informative for hikers and readers of hiking guides. Thanks for the heads up, as well as the reply!
… or the guide is aligned with OSM, if it turns out the OSM is “more correct”.
Yes! Like I said, I hope both projects will inform each other in this way.
No, that’s just a different section. If you show all the trail sections it should be obvious
I’m sure it wouldn’t confuse either you or me, but it could be confusing for users looking to hike a specific section of the trail. In that case, you could accidentally end up with a gap. Besides that, I doubt that which organization is responsible for trail maintenance is the kind of section information they would be looking for.
The thing is, that you can split such routes due to multiple reasons. By area, by mileage, by operator, due to “limitations” in OSM… all will be kind of valid.
@jpolvto: Thinking of your problem… I don’t think splitting the relations would help on the issue. Though I could think of having a specific tag on a node along the route, indicating the description in Wikivoyage is changing. So you could route along the overall relation from one of those special nodes to the next and get the route-section or the mileage,…
Let me point out a few examples of organizations and companies deeply involved in the hiking world:
Komoot
AllTrails
Outdooractive
STF (Swedish Tourist Association)
DNT (Norwegian Trekking Association)
FFRandonnée
PCTA (Pacific Crest Trail Association)
Cicerone
All of them provide guides that divide trails into clearly defined sections. If it were true that every hiker always makes their own daily splits, why is this standardized approach so consistent across the entire industry?
I’ve met hundreds of hikers on the trail, and I have yet to meet anyone who didn’t use a guide with suggested stages. These sections help with planning, navigation, logistics, and even safety. They’re not arbitrary, they reflect real-world use.
So this is not just a personal preference. It’s the norm across both professional guides and actual trail use.
You might be surprised because facts aren’t copyrightable. In principle, as long as you stick to learning individual facts and applying your knowledge of them, then copyright has nothing to do with it. We tend to be hypervigilant on copyright matters because inexperienced contributors don’t have a good grasp of the boundary between facts and creative expressions of them. There’s heightened risk if the source is another map, because it’s harder to argue that facts rather than their representation have been reproduced. If you do rely on the fact that these are uncreative facts, you’ll probably want to make sure no one can mistake it for copying from a map and getting the wrong impression about acceptable sources for mapping.
For reference, ⚓ T388303 Display superroutes in Kartographer is a subtask of a longstanding known issue that many relation types are unsupported. There probably needs to be a general solution to that rendering problem on Wikimedia’s end, since superroute itself is a historical accident, essentially a typo that caught on in some contexts but not others.