Was changing the road classifications to align with South Australia's bypass law really an import?

Communities Oceania
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just asking for a consensus on what the community think about this.

OSM road classification policy favors referring to bylaws as the general correct way of editing openstreetmap

example here, Tag:highway=secondary - OpenStreetMap Wiki

what is a bylaw By-law - Wikipedia

stop signs, speed limits and one way signs are an example of by-laws

Data SA is only one of many sources of our by-laws, other examples include local councils and post offices.

bylaws do not carry a copyright infringement and no entity owns the right to bylaws.

the wider world wide openstreetmap community generally favor using legal bylaw information to classify roads, Mainly because the OSM wiki says road classifications should align with by-laws.

this is a search for “road classification” with in these forums

Search results for ‘road classification’ - OpenStreetMap Community Forum

it provides a overview of how the OSM community views bylaws

a quote from a discussion “The most basic answer to that question is that the system must reflect the legal documents. It is a practice all over OpenStreetMap, from the UK to Germany.”

source is from here Road Classification System (talk & poll) - #5 by Amaroussi

at some point in the history of the OSM project, it is undocumented of who exactly wrote this rough guideline

Australian Tagging Guidelines/Roads - OpenStreetMap Wiki

this guideline does not rule over the wider community standard of the rule as formally given here, there is no documentation about the reasoning of this guideline, its purpose or its importance.

Tag:highway=secondary - OpenStreetMap Wiki

the above link is the community standard policy

bylaws and how available they are varies from country to country, generally road bylaws are mostly available in developed country’s .

the question is was this a “unauthorised DataSA import”

a proposal was outlined in 2015

Import/South Australian Roads - OpenStreetMap Wiki

there was a talk-au discussion aswell

beginning of part one [talk-au] Using roads dataset from data.sa.gov.au (openstreetmap.org)

beginning of part two [talk-au] Using roads dataset from data.sa.gov.au (openstreetmap.org)

consensus favored the proposed import which was planned to be carried out with a script.

the discussed proposal never went ahead simply due to the script not being good enough

Automated Edits code of conduct or “Import” for short

Automated Edits code of conduct - OpenStreetMap Wiki

quoting the first sentence

" The Automated Edits code of conduct must be followed at all times when performing Automated edits to the OpenStreetMap database."

when I changed South Australia’s road classifications it was not a automated edit done with a script.

I did the whole thing by hand in ID.

my question

Given the sourced information above does the OSM community agree that

1, this “import” was unauthorised
2, was a import
3, took by-laws into consideration
4, put factually wrong information into the OSM project

one more question I would like to ask is

is the way that these roads are currently being classified properly surveyed, and is there any documentation about these surveys.

this is the only official documented discussion that has ever taken place regarding what constitutes “whats on the ground” and how to apply it. However from experience this guideline is very dynamic and can change with out proper documentation.

The meaning of “Change highway tags to reflect real usage” - Communities / Oceania - OpenStreetMap Community Forum

example of the rule changing dynamically is this changeset comment thread

my last question

from one of many edits over the last week Changeset: 149515933 | OpenStreetMap

there is no evidence of a formal survey for these classifications, reverting these OSM community standard by-law edits has made these roads non factual and lacking sources of how these roads are classified.

I can not find a discussion about this mass edit that is being carried out with a script in JOSM (automated edit for short)

so my questions are

1, was there a formal documented discussion about this current script edit

2, is it putting sourced information in the project with formal documentation

3, is a mass edit done with a script classified as a Automated Edit (Import)

I would formally like to ask the user who has been making these edits of their view point given the information here.

I have equal rights to make edits just as the user who has been making these edits does, I will not be commenting here, I will draw conclusion in 1 week an take action as necessary.

I would like to hear facts sourced material and examples just as I have please.

Thankyou for reading and hope that we can remain civil in a discussion.

disclaimer this has not been proof read and may need to be edited for formatting only

this discussion is about the edits with “Revert highway classifications to value used prior to unauthorised DataSA import” only

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@slice0 Just as a gentle reminder - https://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks/15905 was revoked to allow you to apologise to the AU community here. I don’t see that yet at https://community.openstreetmap.org/u/slice0/activity.

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in my eyes: this is a new definition since august 2023! its a wrong wiki-edit.

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Those edits are not done by any script, they are manually done by selecting every way along the road in question, changing those, and then going along to update any links either to match the new classification or to match the street they connect to if it’s just a road going across dual carriageways. They’re almost all reverts so there’s no explicit requirement for a survey, and there’s never any need to document any kind of survey for OSM, that term just means “I’ve been there in person and gotten my information that way”.

In terms of the original edits, an import does not need to be automated to be an import, and an import needs to be documented in a specific way by the user doing the import, with community approval involving that. The documentation from a prior import (which was not focused on classifications but bringing in missing roads, and was not going to touch any existing roads in OSM) doesn’t mean anyone can just go ahead and import from that data source at a later date.

I’m not going to bother commenting on classifications in general because that’s been discussed over and over.

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