>Using "if an able person can jump it" as the rule has some issues. How far
Not only that, but as it was described years back* ("Maybe you can just jump
over it." from January 2008) did not seem like a hard set rule, but like a soft
description.
*
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Tag:waterway%3Dstream&oldid=69266
That's how I read it, and I'd be inclined to believe that's how many who don't
speak English as their native language would read it:
- If you can jump over it, it's probably a stream, but not necessarily
- If you can't jump over it, it's more likely a river, but it might still be a
stream
- Locally prevalent mindset will have an effect on where the line between a
river and a stream is set. Around here most, if not all, people would never
call many of the non-jumpable streams and ditches "rivers", so they would not
know to tag them as rivers.
A trunk road is bigger than a residential.
A river is bigger than a stream.
Yet: a trunk road in rural areas may be 1+1 lanes 9 meters, but a residential
road elsewhere may be 2+2 lanes and 13 meters plus sidewalks.
Likewise: a river in one part of the world may be narrower than a stream
elsewhere.
When we can't rely on somebody else's authority (e.g. ref for highways), the
classification always has some gray areas where local practices use a mixture
of locally important attributes to move the line one way or the other.
My point being, that these top level classifications with only two categories
hardly make sense for globally valid hard set division by one attribute. If
somebody has the means and resources to survey and to tag the width and
jumpability and mean annual flow and all that, they will come along and add
that later. Being a "stream in OSM" doesn't even tell us with great detail how
big it is; a small stream is something you can step over - or even bike over -
and a bigger stream might be unjumpable. Is that jumping measured with sneakers
and without baggage, or with a backbag filled with a weeks food rations? And
which one makes sense as the dividing line for a general use mapping database?
* Was three with waterway=riverbank, but even that has been diluted in this
meaning as mappers have had time to draw even narrower rivers with the
riverbanks.
--
alv
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