What's the process for updating an existing wiki page?

General talk Tagging general discussion
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Background: my goal is to enable better support for outdoor activities tagging including dirtbikes.

A. I would like to rework the existing and rarely used dirtbike:scale and related Dirt_bike pages.

These pages were added without a proposal. I tried to reach the original author through one of the discussion pages, and on the forum mentioned, but I haven’t heard anything. Related edits are old.

Should I create a new official proposal similar to this draft I started and reach out for comments?

B) Based on a previous discussion, I would like to propose a new tag mtb:scale=fixme

To replace the existing bicycle=yes or mtb=yes that have been added on mountain trails that are not signposted to encourage/educate mappers to use the appropriate mtb:scale tag instead of legal access tags.

How do I go ahead with this proposal?

  • create an official proposal page for the tag mtb:scale=fixme ?
  • or create a new community topic and post its URL in the wiki page’s discussion for feedback?
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That depends on depth of changes, fixing typo requires no discussion, for massive changes like deprecating entire highway= key even proposal is not good enough.

For documenting de facto tag/value - see Creating a page describing key or value - OpenStreetMap Wiki and note Any tags you like - OpenStreetMap Wiki

For redefining existing tags (and in some way also for adding new values to keys where there is closed set of values) - see Deprecation process - OpenStreetMap Wiki and Deprecated features - OpenStreetMap Wiki

See also https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposal_process

ask wider community here and/or tagging mailing list? In case of no opposition you are fine to proceed without proposal based on such consensus, in case of serious opposition I would consider proposal process.

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BTW, I would consider adding subtag of fixme, not new value of mtb:scale (partially because it could be just used, without spending time on discussion and with larger benefit that it would not be changing how mtb:scale works)

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Perhaps I’m misreading that, bicycle=yes is an access tag. mtb:scale does not replace that.
That also opens up a sore subject for me. Myself and others don’t think mtb:scale is a well crafted tag and prefer mtb:scale:imba, which unfortunately has the statement that it is not for natural paths. Someone tried to change that 2 years ago & got support from me and others, but met with resistance. Talk:Key:mtb:scale:imba.
Even tho I’m an avid mountain biker, I don’t usually add the mtb:scale tags (or the *imba) tags.

I encourage you to rework the dirtbike pages.

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Correct, I don’t mean to replace the definition of legal access tags. Some mappers in my area use bicycle=yes/no to classify the difficulty of a path, probably out of laziness or unfamiliarity with scale tags. These paths have no legal restrictions. For their purpose, bicycle=no/yes could mean any scale, and will make routers avoid paths that more advanced riders could use, so I want to change this data and raise awareness about the scale tags.

I understand your concerns about mtb:scale but this is the main tag supported by outdoor applications, so I want to refer them to this tag first. The more people start using mtb:scale, the more chance people will want to look into other subtags.

I have the feeling the dirtbike scale definitions will need some iteration and time to refine since there exist no official standard difficulty scales for dirtbikes.

Would you suggest then creating a country-specific page first to try it out?
Once we have a solid scale system, we could make it available globally.