I donât think that anything that no longer exists should be on OSM.
agreed
If thereâs not any railway there thereâs just not any railway there.
I think this is too easy, there may still be traces of the former railway when the tracks have been dismantled. We have just been discussing this in the German talk community. There may be embankments, cuttings, tunnels and bridges for example, train stations and other railway buildings. A dismantled railway does not mean there is nothing left to see, and even razed railways can well have left traces (or they couldnât be mapped).
I also donât think that proposed highways should be on the map for the same reason but thatâs an entirely different discussion.
a deprecated tag or deprecated feature is tagging that is recommended by OpenStreetMap community consensus for removal and replacement with other tagging.
Note the important part: âand replacement with other taggingâ
So we should map those, but not the razed railway. Thereâs an embankment? We should map the embankment. Thereâs a tunnel? Map a tunnel. But why map something (railways) that doesnât exist anymore? Where I live someone mapped a tramway that has been closed and razed in 1920s. This has no place in OSM. I understand that what is still visible should be map, but if something doesnât exist anymore whatâs the point of mapping it?
In the post i said that it should be replaced to railway=abandoned or railway=disused or just removed. It would in no way make mapping old railways impossible. It is about removing non-existent things from osm.
This has been hashed out about eight billion times on the mailing lists. I really cannot be bothered to regurgitate the details for the benefit of a bunch of Discord users who have as yet not looked up previous discussions by googling the topic with site:lists.openstreetmap.org[1]. Or who think that in 2024 they have magically come to a perfect consensus that somehow everyone in the past 20 years of the project has missed.
OpenStreetMap would be much better if people spent their time mapping things rather than spending it deprecating things.
For some reason, railways are the only group of objects that have non-existent parts still frequently added on the map.
Thatâs right, there are only 143,266 completely non-existent highway=proposed objects.
Every other thing in osm (like buildings, roads, businesses, etc) are all removed when they dont exist anymore. Railways should not be different. Ohm is a better tool for that.
If theres still a railway left, then railway=disused or abandoned. If theres a tunnel or embarkment or whatever left then tag that as that and not a railway. If theres truly nothing there then delete it.
Your attitude is disgusting. If you cant be bothered to âregurgitateâ the details again then dont even bother posting. I shouldnt have to explain to you that osm is a community project that thrives off of discussion. Its not a zero sum game either, talking about deprecating a bad tag does not take away from anything else period. I also just because other bad non exisisting data is in the database doesnt mean other non existing things should be added either. Proposed highways are in no way relevant to railway discussions.
âWhen I said ârailways are the only group of objects that have non-existent parts still frequently added on the mapâ, the fact there is another major group of objects that has non-existent parts still frequently added to the map is in no way relevant to my pointâ
If you cant be bothered to âregurgitateâ the details again then dont even bother posting
No. If you canât be bothered to respect the community by doing 30 secondsâ googling to see whether this has been discussed before, maybe you should reflect upon your own attitude.
OSM is about community. It is about the dedicated contributions of thousands of people over the last 20 years who have brought their individual enthusiasms to bear upon the best map of the world.
You are bulldozer-ing in with a deletionist attitude about âI have read this in the wiki, therefore I am going toâ - and I quote - simply âdelete itâ. How does that build community? How does that make people who have been spending the last 20 years making the map better want to continue when they see their contributions summarily deleted?
With the best will in the world, you have been mapping in OSM for less than two years. I would not breeze into the Linux kernel mailing list after two years and tell people that they have been getting things wrong for 20 years and only I, Richard, know how their project should be organised - donât worry, Iâve discussed it on Discord and everyone agrees with me.
There is a huge amount of nuance in railway tagging in OSM - just as there is a huge amount of nuance in path tagging, or waterway tagging, or seamark tagging, or highway tagging, or historic building tagging. Any of these nuances are not immediately obvious to casual mappers. Thatâs the point. OSM is better because it captures all this in-depth subject knowledge.
OSM is large. It contains multitudes. There is lots I donât care about in OSM, but I donât tell people that they should stop mapping it because I donât understand it.
I misphrased when I said that âârailways are the only group of objects that have non-existent parts still frequently added on the mapâ. I meant that they were the only ones that kept being added long after they were destroyed. I would also argue that only planned roads shouldnât be added to OSM either, like I said earlier.
I know that razed railway discussions have been talked to death as an issue, but no one else has actually proposed deprecating them. Yes, this was discussed on the discord. People talked about deprecating railway=razed and I proposed making a forum post to propose deprecating it, which everyone seemed to agree with. As I said in the post, this was to bring it up so everyone else can chime in.
I am not a newbie coming in with a big stick and smashing everyoneâs work saying to delete it all. I am not saying I am a super genius who knows best for the project. I also did not just read a few wiki pages and decided to bulldoze in to say and delete everything. Iâm asking you to please not make stuff up about me. Just because I made my osm account two years ago does not mean I am completely forbidden from simply proposing to deprecate a tag. Literally all of this was discussed with others on the discord.
I also donât want this post to meander into some sort of argument since thats just pointless. Iâd like this to stay on topic.
I also want to apologize for being to harsh. I saw your post and interpreted it as you being elitist, rude, and trying to shut down all discussion because youâve been here longer and talked about it on mailing lists. Most of it came from âdiscord kiddies who are unable to use googleâ
I donât see why railways donât use lifecycle prefixes like everything else and get treated the same way as other objects with razed or demolished lifecycle (deleted as necessary). OHM has a new rail layer if you are looking to map what used to be present.
Disparaging a portion of the community for using their preferred communication platform isnât in the spirit of the project either. A person came her to discuss things. You donât have to berate them for using Discord. Definitely doesnât set a good tone.
If thereâs good pointers to previous discussions just post them and move on. Everyone hasnât seen everything. Sometimes things change and we should discuss them again. Etc etc.
An old railroad grade has a distinct look vs a general embankment. These can serve as important landmarks when navigating in the backcountry, e.g. âafter about a half mile you will come to an abandoned railroad gradeâŚâ
However, if there is no evidence of a railroad having existed at a location, I wouldnât map it, but I also wouldnât delete it, as someone with a keener eye than I may have some on-the-ground evidence that I missed.
There is a difference between âplannedâ and âproposed.â If something has been approved and funded by some government entity (in other words, it is âplannedâ), and there is official documentation to that effect, then I think it is ok to map. On the other hand, to me âproposedâ means means an idea has been submitted, which may or may not get approved and implemented. In fact, there may be multiple concurrent competing proposals that the authorities are considering. Given the uncertainty around a âproposedâ feature, I would say they should not be mapped in OSM.
That doesnt have to be tagged as railway=razed, perhaps you could add some embankment tag that signifies its a former railway embankment. Also is the differences from a former railway embankment significant enough to not just be tagged as an embankment?
