The picture is actually https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2053532. if you switch there to an interactive map, and based on the camera direction, it’s actually the western end of https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/517237335#map=19/54.45650/-3.12141 that this is a photo of, which is tagged as “demanding_mountain_hiking” - so whoever mapped it agrees with you!
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I have the feeling that in British English highway=trail would be a good tag for ‘not really a path anymore’ (bad visibility, only trailblazed, bare rock…), but not for with the same goal as the currently proposed highway=scramble which is narrower.
Am I right?
I fear that would only add to the confusion. I don’t think trail is that clearly defined.
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Yes, you’re right, highway=trail would only work along with sac_scale, trail_visibility, scramble=yes, etc… tags.
Alone this would be as fuzzy as actual highway=path, but limited by definition (documentation) to the more challenging path, or where it becomes doubtful this is still a path.
This is an option that let room for existing and future additional tags.
The other global option would be to try to map with single tags such as highway=via_ferrata, highway=scramble, highway=mountaineering, and other values yet to be invented for other particulars.
Unfortunately, experience** suggests that that won’t work, because some of the app developers we are dealing with here are complete muppets***.
** in my case, dealing with DWG complaints - I’m aware I probably see more of this sort of thing than many people, hence me being insistent about this part of the issue.
*** in the https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Muppet sense. As noted above, there are excellent ones too.
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Sure, if its a duck…
But what kind of highway=* value could possibly satisfy highway=path, trail_visibility =no, trailblazed=yes ??
There isn’t one but that is not the point of the scramble value. It’s all about preventing a “muppet” user or application from treating challenging trail or path like a walk in the park. A mistake that could lead to injury to inexperienced hikers. In extreme cases, wasting time and resources of first responders.
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But these cases don’t start and end with scrambles.
As mostly a data consumer with OpenAndroMaps nowadays, that’s really an objective for me to mark cleary where a path could get too dangerous for one’s own ability. And this is of course subjective, so I try to differentiate and show many characteristics so our users can make an informed decisions (so we might be more interested in scrambles as micromapping, for which scramble=yes is fine).
But if we leave specialized maps like OAM, you have to take the ability of the average person into account. I see really a big problem with the huge spectrum that highway=path is covering currently, and how more basic maps are ignorant of that. In my opinion physical and psychological hazards that lead to rescue operations in the mountains don’t start at scrambles; exposed segments, head for heights/sure-footedness as requirements are on the one end, actual climbing routes (not scrambles) that are (wrongly) mapped as highway=path on the other end of the spectrum. And @Matija_Nalis also wrote about other use cases outside the mountain hiking spectrum.
That’s why I see that highway=scramble is in principle a good idea; but it should be part of a bolder move to separate more hazardous parts out of highway=path. Others already elaborated why a wider tag can’t be as intuitive as highway=scramble, and why it might not be necessary anyway. I want to add another thought: if a data consumer really thinks that highway=demanding_trail should be rendered the same as highway=path, what stops him to do the same with highway=scramble?
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Unfortunately, in American English, “trail” is often used for a generic multi-use path. (Sometimes in British English too, as in the Taff Trail and the Tissington Trail.)
Although OSM uses British English, we do try to steer clear of ambiguity where it’s very likely to lead to mistagging. That’s why we use the American English “sidewalk” rather than the British English “pavement”.
I fear that highway=trail would be intuitively used by many mappers to mean a non-hazardous path and then we’d be back where we started.
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The issue here is about people who don’t “really think”.
A lot of data consumers don’t “really think”. They just behave as if a path is a path is a path. I don’t think we should cast too much blame in this scenario: you shouldn’t need a PhD in OSMing to be able to make a map from OSM data.
And to be fair, a lot of mappers also don’t really think. They will, and do, happily trace a faint line across Snowdon as a “path”. Coping with this is a real live problem for mountain rescue teams.
The advantage of highway=scramble is that it causes both data consumers and mappers to think. As a data consumer, you have to make an active decision how to treat highway=scramble; and if you don’t know about the tag, you won’t render it. As a mapper, you now have a choice to make when you map a path; and even if you make the wrong call, as ever, another mapper can come along later and improve your mapping.
Sure, it won’t be right 100% of the time. OSM is iterative. But highway=scramble fails safe, and the current situation doesn’t.
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I agree on the current situation, but wouldn’t highway=demanding_trail (or anything else, any better solution is welcome) be also disruptive and make it easier? Wouldn’t it make it easier for a whole lot of more problems for mountain rescue teams?
I was lead here by @ezekielf because of a discussion in the voting section about finding a compromise which current no-voters might agree too. If this proposal fails to get the threshold of approval one can still use highway=scramble. But in my opinion a solution/future oriented compromise which builds upon this proposal and includes it (e.g. highway=demand_trail, demanding_trail=scramble), is the better way to go in the long term. There are so many good ideas in the proposal AND the discussions that it would be a shame to let it end at this point.
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That’s why it supposed to be highway=demanding_trail instead. Much less chance of confusion “oh I didn’t know it was about demanding trail”
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As I’ve stated before, I’m open to considering a proposal for a broader tag for steep/challenging/dangerous paths/trails, of which a scramble would be a subset. I don’t know if I would support it or not, as it hasn’t been written yet. My initial feeling is that demanding_trail or demanding_path are quite unspecific tag names and far too open to interpretation, but I’m willing to consider a well thought out proposal if someone writes one.
One can go great lengths, to see something. I might add to the below, for those hikers, that see paths everywhere, not everything, that looks like a path is used for human traffic: traces of boots in soft soil look different from those of hoofed game. Something that I occasionally take care of, when proving path mappings present in openstreetmap data. Fresh snow makes that much easier.
Following the above:
I have elaborated on that before, mostly rendering the cartographers view of what makes a “Steig”. On the other hand though, there is the maintainers view: Especially in the Rax area, there are scrambles, that are called “Steig”. Maybe that comes from “Bergsteigen” (mountaineering), even though they are in the low ranges, no summit as a goal. On a walk today, I also got reminded of the term “Steigspuren” that is frequently mentioned in itineraries. No idea though, if it means “traces of a Steig” or “traces of people hiking/scrambling there”. But not a Steig 
PS: I even found a dictionary, https://tureng.com/de/deutsch-englisch/scramble where Steig gets translated as scramble. It is operated by a translation bureaux, that prouds themselves of domain-specific translations. They mention it as a “sport” - something, that brings up another problem with the proposal:
Scrambling is a leisure activity, that might boom. Not now, but maybe some time. So, the scrambles operated by the SAC or the ÖTK (Austrian Tourist Club) - how to differentiante them from random GPX dumps (as is often observed with “hw=path”? Is informal sufficient?
Thanks. The idea was that highway=demanding_tail + demanding_trail=scramble tag combination would have exactly the same meaning as proposed highway=scramble (just rearranged into more general highway=demanding_trail section and more precise demanding_trail=scramble section).
I.e. it would be a way to try to push forward next attempt of scramble proposal by alleviating some of the issues the voters are having, while still supporting main purpose for separate highway=* value (i.e. people who do not explicitly seek “demanding trails” should not be lead there by mistake / app programmer laziness / “by default”)
Of course the proponent @Hungerburg would to well to take other proposal comments into consideration too (some at least should be easy to adopt, e.g. clarifications and more precise definitions, without going against core idea the proponent is trying to accomplish). I’d even be willing to invest some time to help group/analyze “no” votes one by one, and brainstorm the possible solutions that would solve as much of those concerns as possible.
(Note that different/additional demanding_trail=* values like e.g. demanding_trail=jungle would of course have their own explanations, of course, but that is only indirectly related, and open to discussion what initially proposed set of values should be – as secondary tag, they could easily be added later via additional proposals, and even via ATYL)
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Demanding trail sounds like a value for a route or path containing, among other difficulties, a section where most people would have to scramble -i.e. need all fours to pass, without haven to pull the body up by your arms. That is the same information that the SAC scales convey. I guess from a climber’s perspective the scramble is the less demanding section.
All in all, I think the simple solution is to add scramble=yes to the section of a path, trail or whatever highway=* or route=* (or area) where the scramble is. This would work just the same as bridge=yes: easy for mappers and easy for data consumers. It’s perfectly backward compatible, i.e. it does not break anything, it just gives data consumers the option to enhance their maps and applications, refine searches, refine router weights. Applications who ignore the new option will not benefit, but they also will not suffer, as they would if a new highway value were introduced.
I assume that applications concerned with safety will gladly take the opportunity to mark scramble sections on their maps. Others might wait a while to see if the tag gains momentum. If it does not, I’m sure the less simple tagging solutions would not make it either.
As for precision, the OSM way is: let the mappers decide where exactly the path stops and the scramble begins, and where the scramble ends and the climb or the next path begins. For me , many passages are scrambles and real scrambles are a full block, but I’m perfectly capable to see where most people could scramble further. If I can see the end, I could probably map the scramble, but to be sure I probably would wait for someone to actually go there and yell.
For all to know, the voting has been suspended, at time of a kind last vote, by the way mentioning a deficit (i.e. lack of commonly accepted authority) and reset to draft. The documentation of the proposal process is sparse on this happening, formally all required steps been taken. Data should be stable, so you are now free to brainstorm.
The issue is much bigger than just the “scramble” itself, so anything dedicated just to scrambling seems doomed to fail (e.g. see comments in “no” votes on https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/highway%3Dscramble)
For exact reason why highway=demanding_tail + demanding_trail=scramble combination of tags is proposed, please see previous discussion, especially this post.
Demanding trail sounds like a value for […]
See this this post explaining how tags don’t mean what one might guess they might mean (e.g. what it “sounds like”), but instead what is defined in its wiki.
However, value and sub-tag name itself (demanding_trail) is open for discussion, so if you find it confusing, please see this request for suggestions and by all means feel free to propose better one - the main constraint being it must be as wide as possible to accommodate much more than just scrambling, which is much too specific for this purpose, as noted in previous links.
I have met grandmas traversing so-called demanding trails with ease. Probably not yours; Still, I see no reason to make openstreetmap tagging patronize over grandmas.
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Wide proposals stand less chance of succeeding, because there are more things to disapprove of. A minimal proposal which does not hinder further development has much better chances, because it hurts less people’s convictions.
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