First of all, you should NEVER remove anything from the database, unless you have made certain by your own eye that the object in question is an error and not existing in reality! Even than take care not to remove anything marked as abandoned or alike, that marks this object was once here and the info is kept for historical reasons.
OK, point taken. (I know I am not 100% clear on the norms, which is why I'm asking first.) I am most used to the USGS 1:25K paper maps, and at that scale there is a sense of clutter vs useful. I get the point that the database doesn't have that notion, but that when rendering the tags determine what's included. So I think my real issues are about tagging. Perhaps the wiki should have some sort of "what should be on the map" section that explains this point more. But probably I should have read more of it and chased more links before asking. How this should be tagged depends on what's on the ground. Please have a look at: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Map_Features It indicates to use highway=service together with service=driveway. I had read that, and kept it open while adding some point features. But I managed to miss service=driveway. I think it's hard for new people to get their head around the tag scheme, but I also don't have any good suggestions for improving the documentation - it really seems very good. Funnily enough, I don't have a clear understanding what a driveway actually is, seems to be an american english specific term? It is an en_US term, yes. Confusingly it can mean at least 3 things: very small bit of pavement, perhaps 8m x 3m that one parks their car on in front of/next to a house, perhaps connecting to a garage. Small enough that unless one is doing a plot plan to show what's lawn, garden, building footprint, etc. it is unimportant. longer paved area, typically only enough for 1 car width, from road to house, typically opening up to an area where a few cars can park. Mine is like this, and 200m long. the previous two are for single-family (or perhaps duplex) residential. In larger things, like an apartment building, or a smallish business, there might be 2 lanes, a yellow line, or even lighting. People might call this a driveway or a service road or an access road. Driveway has a connotation of private road that one should not be on unless a guest of or going to the place at the other end. Service road doesn't t me have that kind of notion. Thus the road to a tiny airport that has a restaurant open to the public is an access road, but the road into a manufacturing company that's posted No Trespassing is a driveway, even if there are 10x the people using it daily and it has a yellow line and streetlights. In the end I think I am wanting a way to tag residential driveways from industrial driveways and commercial driveways, as the social/privacy issues of using them are different. I'll go with highway=service, service=driveway, and perhaps for commercial driveways where the public is welcome access=permissive and for private ones access=private. Thanks to all for the comments; I think i'm straightened out now.
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