Feature Proposal - Voting - highway=scramble

[ezekielf (Zeke Farwell)]

@Adamant1 & @eartrumpet, continuing here from the voting section. I find extended converstations on wiki pages quite difficult to participate in.

@Adamant1

It sucks the “vote” didn’t go your way, but it’s not like this isn’t a solvable problem. It’s just not solvable with this solution. It happens sometimes. Turning “scramble” into a key without the highway part still has the same problems highway=scramble does though. Get over it find something better. There’s plenty of suggestions here to build something workable off of.

@ezekielf

The suggestions offered here by opposing voters dismiss the problem this proposal is intended to solve: that scrambles are not paths and it is untruthful to tag them as highway=path. Opposing voters seem to be saying this is not actually a problem. Given this, I am not seeing the potential compromise you speak of.

@Adamant1

I can’t speak for anyone else, but the reason I’m “dismissing the problem” is because if we go down that route we could just as easily say scrambles aren’t highways either. Which wouldn’t help this out anymore then addressing the path “problem” would. Look at this way, according to highway=* “The key highway=* is the main key used for identifying any kind of road, street or path.” What option out of those is a scramble if it’s not a path? It sure isn’t a road or a street, and you say it isn’t a path. So why are they being tagged with a highway tag in the first place then?

I’m open to the idea that not only is a scramble not a path, it is also not a highway so we should use a different key as well. What would you suggest @Adamant1? This is not the primary argument I’ve seen so far though. What I’ve seen is people saying “yes, scrambles are paths and we should continue to tag them as highway=path”.

@eartrumpet

I was refering to a different solution like highway=demanding_path, which is one of many suggestions that were made while discussing highway=scramble. And of course scramble is a kind of path; since 14 years the wiki says that path is also used for hiking trails; hiking trails include trails for mountain hiking, which according to very well developed and respected definitions like SAC scale can require the use of hands. So scrambles can be part of hiking trails, for which highway=path is used according to the Wiki. Of course the wide definition of highway=path is problematic, but saying it’s not part of the current definition misses the point. Not only scramble is problematic; only looking at scramble and not looking at everything else which can be problematic for non-mountain hikers is a step too short IMO. In German we have the word “Steig” for everything which is more demanding than a level footway, this would be the logical differentiation in the German speaking alpine context; that starts with SAC scale T2. And of course a scramble is a part of a “Steig”.

Yes, highway=demanding_path has been suggested. I like that it is a separate primary tag from highway=path however this would be a much broader category than highway=scramble and seems much more subjective to me.

I disagree that a scramble is a kind of path. A path is something you can walk on, a scramble is not. Yes hiking trails and routes definitely contain scrambles. These parts of the trail/route are pathless. Yes highway=path has been used for scrambles for a long time, but that just means we’ve all been lying to the renderer for a long time . I’m interested to learn more about the German “Steig” concept. I’m in favor of subdividing highway=path into more specific categories like this.