Hi, I've recently stumbled upon some confusing usages of the key designation=* in my area, so I tried to find out what it really means and how it is used correctly.
I haven't succeeded. Of course there is the wiki page [1] at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:designation which explains that it is used for the local classification of roads in the UK. But on the same page the usage as a descriptive tag for nature reserves is also documented. Looking at taginfo [2] seems to harden the case for road classification, but also shows 'shed' in 5th rank. But I was curious about how this is actually used outside of the UK. So I did a OverPass-Api query for 500 ways on designation=* with a bounding box of Germany [3] and fed that through a 'grep designation' which gave me a horrifying list [4]. Seems like I can delete my fresh wiki page translation [5] and replace it with a 'just tag anything you want with it'. Now this might be unfair, as OverPass sorts by way ID which might be a bad choice for a random sample. But I actually didn't find even one correct example of usage in there. I'm so baffled by this, I don't even have a decent question to ask. Where to start? Modify the wiki according to usage? To what usage? Modify the tags? All of them? To what? (I said 'decent'. Not that I don't have questions ...) Or just slowly walk away from that topic? Regards, Chaos [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:designation [2] http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/designation#values [3] http://overpass.osm.rambler.ru/cgi/interpreter?data=%5Bout:json%5D;way%5Bdesignation%5D%2846%2E845703125%2C5%2E185546875%2C55%2E634765625%2C15%2E46875%29%3Bout%20500%3B [4] http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=ymViH17J [5] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DE:Key:designation _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
