I do not reside in Queensland but I visit parts of the state regularly and collect information which I can add to OSM.
In recent times a proliferation of unnamed roads has appeared on the map with edits usually titled "Missing Roads in Queensland" or similar. I have communicated with a couple of the people, providing specific instances of observed errors, but the problem appears to be continuing and spreading. It appears to be people who have never visited Australia and who are part of an organised team. They are using satellite imagery and adding ways that are usually tagged as highway=unclassified. It is almost as if the team members have a quota of edits to be achieved and are not being careful in the quality of their edits. Not all the additions are errors. I have noted about three added roads near Blackall Qld to which I have been able to add names. Some of ways are private roads which I have re-tagged as highway=service and access=private, if I am confident that is the case. The majority of the roads (perhaps as many as 70%) appear to me to be fences that have been mapped as roads. Most fences in rural areas have cleared spaces on either side of the fence and, to the unfamiliar eye looking at satellite imagery, they can appear to be dirt roads. Sometimes there may be a track alongside the fence but it usually barely navigable and strictly used only by the owner for fence maintenance - often even that would be difficult. In some instances, in the vicinity of areas I have surveyed, I have been confident in retagging the non-existent roads as fences but there seem to be many roads appearing in unpopulated areas of Queensland that I have not visited. While the errors may have been made by armchair mappers acting in good faith, the accumulation of non-existent roads is a long term problem for the map. Further, some of these "roads" are being mapped in quite inhospitable terrain and could lead a naive driver to serious problems. In my experience, if I don't have a name for it, it probably isn't a public road. It is not until one visits an area and then looks again at satellite imagery that one can learn to interpret that imagery. I am posting my concerns in this forum to raise awareness and in the hope that it may put pressure on these over-enthusiastic mappers to restrain from mapping non-existent roads. _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
