What happened to border_control?

General talk
1

I have been happily mapping border crossings and in JOSM there is a preset for it. Suddenly, I find that this has been removed from the Map Features page.

Now, how do we tag border crossings? All I can find now is a proposed feature from 2007.

Another one we need is check points. Asia is full of permanent ones and they need to be tagged. There is only an abandoned proposal. Now I find that people start tagging them as border_control, as in this one:

Node id=1034041352 lat=15.1309097 lon=98.5068825 (projected: x=1.719269435500183, y=0.26720837867183667); Data set: 1F71B53; User: [id:61891 name:stephankn]; ChangeSet id: 6529E1; Timestamp: 2010-12-11T21:28:37Z, Version: 1
  tags:
    "highway"="checkpoint"
    "note"="Immigration checkpoint"
    "barrier"="border_control"

This is not a border crossing…

Cheers,
Peter.

2

Just continue tagging as you were used to.

The wiki Map Features page, while a handy guide to common tags, is not the be-all and end-all of tags. You can use any tag you like.

3

There are 854 barrier=border_control in OSM, according to TagInfo. http://taginfo.openstreetmap.de/keys/barrier#values

And a further 73 barrier=checkpoint. I have added plenty of both as they occur frequently in the Middle East. Like Ldp says, the fact that it has disappeared from Map Features doesn’t mean we can’t continue to use it.

4

Sure, but if it’s not listed there then how are newbies supposed to tag this?

Also, is it better to use highway or barrier for checkpoints?

5

I would say barrier, as the checkpoint is a barrier along the highway, not a type of highway.

6

It’s listed as an approved type of barrier here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Approved_features/barriers

So why not just edit the barrier wiki page and add it in?
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:barrier

If I get a moment I’ll do it.

7

It’s only listed as an inactive proposal, but since there isn’t anything else I’ll just keep using that. Thanks for all your comments. I’ll try to add it back into the map features page.

Strange: border_control is back on the features page, but history shows the last change having been made in November. Is history broken?

Cheers,
Peter.

8

I added it back to the barriers table template - that’s probably why it has reappeared in Map Features.