As far as I could tell when visiting the area, these are not signposted in any way nor are they advertised by example the national park in which they are located or by local tourist offices (if they were, especially the longer named one would have a simpler memorable name anyway and not “ Cerro Torres, Mt. Fitz Roy, Laguna Marconi & Laguna Diablo Round Trail”).
Nothing seems to match the wiki definition:
Foot and hiking routes are named or numbered or otherwise signed walking routes. A route is a customary or regular line of travel, often pre-determined and publicised. It consist of paths taken repeatedly by various people.
Therefore I proposed deletion of these two relations since I think they are not verifiable and do not have a place in OSM. GPX files for interested people are available on Wikivoyage, so this information would not be lost, it would just lose on prominence.
I reached out to the original uploader and he does not agree with me, saying they are useful (I could quote the reply in more detail but it was still a privaste conversation).
Therefore I would like the wider community to chime in - should these relations be kept or deleted (or something else)?
It might be worth asking the people who have edited these previously - have a look at for example https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/12350052/history. One of those edits was “Updated the last section of the vuelta al Huemul according to the current in situ marking”, suggesting that there may (or may not) have been something a year ago.
(a PDF from the national park documenting it plus a dozen of people walking it every day in season, even some marking)
Nothing like that can be said about the “Viedma Glacier Lower End‬” (which overlaps almost completely with a part of the Huemul circuit). Definitely no signage present.
That would be Camino routes that are not yet signed, for instance. Or E1-E12 routes, that don’t have their own signage in France. I also vaguely recall routes advertised by local authorities and not yet signed, but no example comes to my mind (EDIT: I believe that Chemin d’Amadour falls in that category)
I also would not consider user generated content on websites as a valid basis for OSM routes, unless they are very well known or are marked on the ground.
Aha, that brings happy memories hiking it 11 years ago in its entirety relying solely on paper maps (which mostly did not show it, sadly).
There seems to be a consensus forming, I added a poll to the initial post nonetheless. I would also wait a few days for possible reaction of the original uploader who was invited here, but unless something changes, I would delete the relation in due time.
Your 1 is an improvement over mine. I’m less convinced by your formulation of 2 and 3, because it does not separate clearly authority (of official bodies or their delegates) and notoriety. Is there a particular reason why UK Ramblers cannot fall under category number 2?
To clarify, by “UK Ramblers” I mean the “The Ramblers” a major British Charity that takes a very active role in protecting and promoting walking (routes).
For me, Point 1, is fairly simple. It is Point 2 that engages with the problems we have with deciding if route can be added. There are now a huge number of app & websites that record walking and cycling routes. But most of these personal routes which should not be added to OSM.
Many government bodies, or organisations with an official role in creating and managing a route are choosing to only list the route, or details of route, online or paper form. We need to separate these “official” routes, from those personal routes found on sites such as Komoot. My test for addition is that is listed, & curated, by an organisation capable of taking effective action to protecting the route on the ground. eg Would be responsible, or officially listened to, if arranging a fallen tree to be removed.
Major organisations such as the (British) Ramblers or the Long Distance Walkers Association, may likely be treated with great respect, but don’t have a legislated powers.
Point 3 is for routes where existence is unanimously accepted, but are not signed, or listed by the authorities who control the route. If this case we need a reliable source. The Ramblers would be an example of a reliable source (though not sure about copyright)
I hope that whatever comes out of this discussion, it will lead to guidance being added to the wikis for recreational routes (hiking, walking, cycling, etc.) on what routes could be mapped and what routes should not be (routes published by private persons, for instance).
Concerning routes that lack signage but are published by an official organisation, we should consider that in many parts of the world, funds are lacking to add signage to a route on the ground, so if we exclude such routes, we will exclude a considerable portion of routes.
In France, we have been able so far to trace some sort of delegation of powers from government bodies to these organisations. As for European routes, there is this label awarded by the European Council than can be taken into consideration. It allows us to limit class 3 to a strict minimum and thus avoid debates about the legitimacy of private initiatives.
Admittedly, the French have a preference for situations where authority is derived from a single centralized source.
Still… I’m wondering how a purely notoriety-focused rule would deal with commercial initiatives such as a very well known soda drink brand who decides to sponsor virtual hikes across Europe.
So they do not all use the same (often peculiarly German-centric:-)) texts and instead link to each other so information can be updated in only one place.
Furthermore, within a template code, <noinclude>...</noinclude> indicate that the content should not be transcluded in the target page, should you need that. This is typically used for template categories and template descriptions that should not appear in the target page.