I think the whole issue should be split into two separate questions: The verifiability of the rule and the rule itself.
As far as verifiability is concerned - it seems the question how far an able person can jump is not an issue here. As i said before i would interpret the rule from a practical standpoint, i.e. tag as stream if i generally would assume crossing this waterway with dry feet would be considered feasible on a hike by most people without disabilities. Of course there will be borderline cases but there always are, even if a quantative rule exists. The question of changing width of a waterway can also be answered from a practical perspective - it is sufficient for the waterway to have occasional points where it can be crossed to qualify. This interpretation of course also means that the tagging of a waterway does not only depend on the properties of the waterway itself - a 1 meter wide 'stream' running in a steep walled gorge 10 meter wide on top cannot practically be jumped across. Which leads me to the rule itself which - as noted previously - does not make much sense as a mandatory top level distinction for waterways. But it has been around for a long time and a lot of data has been tagged based on it. This in my opinion means changing the meaning of the existing river/stream distinction - even if there was a practically verifiable alternative rule - would serve no purpose except devaluing existing data as well as newly entered information. The only sensible way to change things would be to move the distinction into a secondary tag (something like crossable=* for example, that would also allow tagging the possibility to wade through) and to re-tag all waterways with a uniform primary tag (natural=waterway would be an obvious choice although it could be useful to make the distinction natural/artificial waterway indeed mandatory). Greetings, -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
