On Mon, 31 Aug 2015 11:51:38 +0200 Christoph Hormann <chris_horm...@gmx.de> wrote:
> On Monday 31 August 2015, Mateusz Konieczny wrote: > > See > > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mechanical_Edits/Mateusz_Konieczny > >/surface%3Dsoil_to_surface%3Ddirt > > > > I plan to change surface=soil to surface=dirt. surface=soil is a > > clear duplicate of surface=dirt. It is also less popular and > > undocumented on http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:surface . > > surface=soil usage is slowly increasing and recently passed > > threshold of 400 entries worldwide. It would be a good idea to > > retag it to already documented tag before this duplicate gets more > > popular. > > I would be careful here - 'dirt' is essentially a very vague term > which probably originates from the concept of 'dirt roads' here. > 'Soil' in the other hand is fairly precise, see > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil > > Only parts of the earth surface are actually covered by soil so if a > way is correctly tagged with surface=soil (and i don't know if that > is the case for the 400 cases you mention) this is something specific > and potentially useful and should not be degraded by turning it into > something as vague as surface=dirt. > > In general i think surface=ground is the most sensible tag for > tagging ways that are just established somewhere without notible > construction work when you can't be more specific - it implies that > the way surface is essentially the ground there in its natural > state. surface=dirt OTOH can mean anything from the remaining tracks > of a car driving across a wayless area to a solidly built gravel road. > You may want to edit http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:surface - currently surface=ground is described there as "No special surface, the ground itself has marks of human or animal usage. This value gives only a rough description; if possible, use a more precise value such as grass, dirt, clay, sand, gravel, pebblestone or rock.". _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk