Hey, so I am trying to map the historical Robbers Cave in Dehradun. It looks like this:
I have been informed that I should use natural=cliff for the barrier caused by drop in height. However, how am I supposed to map this path which is filled with water? Both pedestrian footway and a simple “path” seems wrong.
is it currently used as path/footway/trail ?
Yes. There is a ticket house outside and you can enter for ₹35. When I went there around 100-150 people were in the whole path.
I would map it as a path that is a ford, I guess? At least based on the photo.
This little gorge is definitely not a ford. It is a stream flowing out of the cave and visitors can walk up the gorge for a short way in the streambed. So it is not a real path or trail but a very easygoing form of canyoning. There is no dedicated tag for such ways but there was a proposal for route=canyoning recommending highway=path for such simple water trails.
Following this recommendation I would go for
highway=path
surface=water
that is clearly ford for me
The wiki says says “a small part of a highway where a waterway runs over it.” However, this Robbers Cave is actually a 1km+ stretch filled with water everywhere which sometimes is a deep as waist. You also have to climb multiple times to reach the top area, though the waterfall at the bottom area is also fine. I am not sure if this is a ford.
A ford is a crossing of waterway and track/path, not a strecht of a path following the waterway for a certain distance.
This looks like a good solution. I will use it. Thanks.
I would also consider it as a crossing of a waterway and path
I visited few places in mountains where you drive for 20m, 100m or about 800m on track/driveway located on riverbed of a stream and concurrent with it - I would consider it also as a ford.
Come on, this is not a crossing but a shared way. There were a few discussions earlier about similar object (a small stream sharing the way with a track for a certain distance) and the proposed solutions were
Put the 2 ways (track and stream) on top of each other for the shared distance
Cut on of the ways (either stream or track) and add the tags to the other way for the shared distance.
I think 1. is the better solution because both ways remain represented separately and I would do exactly the same in the given case: draw on way for the stream and tag it with waterway=stream and another way on top for the trail and tag it with highway=path + surface=water.
-1 for highway=ford in any case.
fully support, that ancient tagging was a bad idea
see Key:ford - OpenStreetMap Wiki for modern
this shared way is also a crossing, I see no contradiction here
I do …
I see another 300-message long thread about highway=path in our near future, but here we go… I oppose this tagging. It is yet another step towards downgrading the meaning of highway=path towards “please, paint a line on the map here”.
Please note that the wiki page only suggests to use highway=path only when no special equipment is required. You might do the canyon above in your normal footwear but I don’t think that’s generally recommended or comfortable. That counts in my eyes as special equipment.
Adding ford=yes is a stretch but has the advantage of being an established tag that provides less of a surprise than surface=water. Better go for a different main tag here. highway=aquatic?
Usually we map what is on the ground, habi? There is a path walked by hundreds of people every day without any special equipment (unless you understand a pair of flipflops as such … 
) and this path is covered with water. I cannot see a problem with this tagging, better than ford=yes anyhow, as the path does not cross the waterway. You walk up that waterpath through the small gorge to the cave and the same way back. That does not at all sound like a ford to me.
No objection, but I believe this is such a special case that a separate main tag would be a bit exaggerated. Btw. there are a couple of similar gorges in Australia, where a trail follows the gorge which also incorporates a small stream und there are stretches where the trail and the stream share the way - if you want to follow you have to walk in the stream which is a pleasure allowing you to cool down your feet. I cannot see a problem in mapping two ways in such a gorge, either parallel where they are separeted, or on on top of the other one where they share the way. This represents exactly the situation on the ground.
One in particular, you wade for part of the way, but then have to swim for ~20m, as that part is ~3m deep!
Oh, & it’s also inside a cave!
Would you tag this as a 26-km-long ford?
Happy here that such will never happen in my local area. The “water to ford” or the “water surfacing the path” will have 10°C, at most 15°C during a heat wave lasting a week, so certainly not a hundred people in flip-flops and shorts spending there an hour or so at any time.
This only shifts the problem.
This still degrades the meaning of key highway=*.
keys in OSM basically have no meaning, they are rather grab bags or loosely related topics, so not much is lost if anything
but maybe there is a better tagging, can you propose one?