I wonder if the community could advise me on an aspect of mapping I wish to understand better.
Look at the map. To the right of the river DAFNOREMA is supposedly a long path that goes into a field. I was there today and it is a land track access road. Editing it is not a problem but i have some questions.
How did the line become “chosen” to be a path when it was originally marked on the map?
Did a computer do it or a person?Is there any way to know this?
Is there anyway to see where,when and who did it?
My main aim is to understand better how the map is created ,obviously roads and paths being some of the most important features on the map.
Thank you
You can choose between numerous different types and classes in the editor. See this list in the wiki for all popular values: Key:highway - OpenStreetMap Wiki
The person is free to decide which one to choose when creating.
At the moment, I am not aware of any software that automatically uploads automatically created routes to OpenStreetMap. In my experience, these are always 100% human.
Of course, all you have to do is look at the history of the property. In the iD editor, select the way, scroll down in the left pane and click View on openstreetmap.org (link). There you have to click on View History: Way History: 561345220 | OpenStreetMap
There are also various tools that make this easier or display it differently. Example: OSM Deep History
In your case, the path was created over 6 years ago. Perhaps the satellite image was not yet good enough to distinguish between individual types of ways. That’s why I would simply change it to the correct value. If the change was not that old, I would simply write to the user and ask nicely why the decision was made this way.
Wow! You are extremely knowledgeable .Thank you very much.
I had thought this about the sat imagery but wanted to hear from someone with a greater knowledge than myself.
When i have time i will look at the I.D editor.It will be the first time so it will be an interesting learning experience.
Thank you once again.I wish you lived next door to me!
Last step in this topic: please click the button “Solution” at the bottom of the post of mcliquid, so that every forum user can immediately see your question has been solved.
One exception I’ll point out here: there is a fair amount of data imported into OSM by a computer and it “chooses” the road type to best match the imported data. In the US there is a lot of data from the TIGER road imports and the classification of roads is frequently wrong. Either the road has changed over time or the initial TIGER data wasn’t specific enough to tell us what kind of road it was.
I’m not sure exactly which of my statements you are referring to exactly, but since it was about automated computer classification of roads, I doubt that this is what happened with the TIGER import.
Let me claim, without having been involved back than, that a human said ‘highway=A from the TIGER dataset equals highway=Z in OSM’ instead of an self-executing computer - but proof me if im wrong.
@mcliquid you did not mention imports from datasets (with incompatible classes) at all. but not all data is directly captured from reality by manuall or automated interpretation. I think this is what @funwhilelost wanted to add.
