A local landowner has edited OSM over the last year or so to reflect changes they have made to their land. However recently they have just deleted footpaths from the map and left no change comments except ‘updated’ (insufficient notes are something the user has done on multiple occasions).
way: 608112284 - MST28 - This is an Gloucestershire County Council PROW (MST28), it is currently closed due to safety reasons, and was the subject of a DMMO on Monday 10th December. It was determined the southern part of the footpath would be extinguished, however this hasn’t been confirmed and still the footpath technically exisits.
way: 1181164667 - Oak Way - This is a footpath that links Oak Way to MST30 via a partially paved footpath. It was the subject of a DMMO order on Monday 10th December and was agreed it would be added. This decision doesn’t change the fact the footpath exists and should be on the map. Once is it officialy a PROW it be updated to reflect that.
ways: 683898229 & 1191313653 - These are paths at the top of the area, they link MST30 to a viewpoint know locally as ‘The Rock’.
The DMMO meeting mentioned above also determined a number of additional footpaths to be added to this landowner’s land, something they have strongly fought against. These changes to OSM came on the same day as that decision, it appears the changes were made as a reaction to the decisions in that DMMO meeting.
There was another footpath deletion in a separate changeset (https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/160128244 - again deleting a (non-PROW but well trodden) footpath. I reverted this change as it was a single edit. This changeset also had an insufficent changeset comment of a fullstop.
My question would be what to do with the larger changeset that has wholesale removed 3 established footpaths by a OSM user who is not providing suitable changeset comments.
It was suggested by another OSM user the changeset should be reverted and potentially reporting the user to the The Data Working Group?
I’m pretty this has been an ongoing issue for a long time now as I remember looking at those paths long ago because of arguments about whether they should be shown…
Yes @TomH - it still is an issue, but with news this week. The DMMOs I mentioned in my post were agreed by GCC on Monday and are now in the ‘Objection’ period where you’d expect the landowner to object and for it to then be escalated to the Secretary of State.
Just looking at the reverted changes, it looks like this this subsequent changeset made by the same user is blocking some of the reverted elements. Should that be reverted too? https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/160128506
I think the changes in 160128506 need to be reverted, this would allow way: 1181164667 and 939106138 to be rejoined and to back to their previous states.
It would also remove the duplication between way: 1341532351 and the reinstated way 608112284.
I’ve adjusted the paths and duplication, the maps now appear as they were at the beginning of the week and crucially now the map reflects “what’s on the ground”.
Oops, I didn’t see your last message and tried to improve on my previous revert in Changeset: 160215241 | OpenStreetMap which turned out to be a no-op since you did everything already
Thanks @woodpeck, I’ve also added a few map notes where those footpaths will need to change in the future once the DMMOs have been ratified and added to the definitive map in Gloucestershire.
I’ve added a map note to explain the current closure of MST28 PROW. Is there a ‘best practice’ way to show a closure to a footpath? It is a 6 month closure, currently due to end on the 5th February 2025.
There are conditional access tags that can be used to show medium term closures like this. The conditions can be that access is not allowed during the dates of the TTRO closing the footpath. So access:conditional= something relevant from the TTRO
