Yes, I still have strong opinions about this topic because road classifications for roads I drove on and COULD NOT CONTINUE TO USE SAFELY in my AWD roadworthy car where overruled in this community by people who admitted on the thread that they have NO EXPERIENCE with that road.
In the case of changing my edits 6 months after anyone else noticed it (when that driver was visiting the area in summer to camp, not traverse through), as many people had voted in the impromptu election that was held in the bowels of this forum for a different topic to call the road secondary as unclassified. I think its worth noting on that thread the major highways in this area are Primary, and this unusable gravel path is secondary. So community members can neither raise the other better roads, nor lower the classifications of unusable ones.
This was justified in the thread because Victoria formally classes this road as a C class road (even though it’s not paved, has no shoulders, and is 1 lane in most of the length contrary to the published formal definitions in Victoria), and it is not C class once you cross to NSW. And even though the local NSW visitor center and countless victims of this road do not recommend this road for traversing through this area, this unusable road is still marked as secondary in OSM apparently because of how roads are classed nationally like in Tasmania despite the definition and usability of any other secondary road in Victoria (at least that I have experience with).
I am still mystified by how anyone in this community can consider a road classification as secondary, tertiary, or unclassified in equal opinions. It is still my opinion that something is seriously wrong with the definitions of hierarchy if any can be applied so whimsically.
I couldn’t find in the OSM documentation where it says to have people login to the forum for an impromptu online vote on classifications including some voters having no experience with the road and data will be decided by kangaroo court. And Swavu, the oceania moderator, and one of the original mappers of this particular roadway had weighed in on the changeset, but not in the thread/vote.
I strongly believe this community has a responsibility to and can do better. Recent news from Tasmanian roadways suggests perhaps there is more the mapping community could do to improve visitor’s experience with local roadways. Yea I guess someone could go into every single track across Australia and map the smoothness of gravel tracks that change seasonally, no we should not have to when considering the purpose of road hierarchy against other roadways in the local area instead of across the nation.
Note: I did and still do agree track was an inappropriately harsh downgrade given my mapping experience with roadways in Los Angeles, where even our hiking trails on fire break tracks are better paved and maintained than these C class roads in Victoria (at least in winter when I use them).
