Proposal talk:Scenic
I canceled my proposal of the tag „scenic“ to properly close the discussion. Although I thought it was a truly wonderful idea I don’t really seem to be in the majority. I had some more ideas to formulare clearer criteria – but the more I think about them the more it became clear that I always refer to information or tags already in the map. (like existence of separated cycleways or ‘secondary roads’ as a proxy for more traffic). So the new tag would seem just redundant – and clever navigation algorithms could derive the same information without “my” tag. And I accept that traffic density – which would be helpful as an additional information - would not be a very reliable tag.
The mail reference to signposts for scenic streets in some countries is interesting – but I don’t want to modify the proposal to focus on that because I don’t know these signposts from the area I live in. And the existing use of scenic = yes already seems to cover exactly this situation. GPSfriend
Maybe you should have scenic photographs in bad weather -- so that will help us recognise them in adverse conditions.
If there's a view use a viewpoint tag - otherwise it's too subjective.
Two phrases:
1) Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
2) OSM data should, as far as is reasonably possible, be verifiable. The principle applies to tags and other aspects of data representation, and essentially means another mapper should be able to come to the same place and collect the same data ("verify" the data you have entered). This principle excludes hypothetical or opinionated data like ratings.
There are (or should be) means of tagging areas that have been officially classed as "areas of outstanding natural beauty" or similar. These are objectively verifiable (somewhere there is a certificate granted by a competent authority). This is mere opinion. My opinion as to what is scenic may be very different from yours.
I do not think this tag is a good idea.
I agree to the argument to focus on verifiable information. Otherwise no consistent optimization and proposal would be possible. This is why I try to give specific criteria what to look for when choosing a grade.
Just like "good" or "bad" track-qualities could be perceived very differently by different users of bicycles or different hikers. Here the tracktypes with different grades offer a practical guideline for consistent tagging of highways. And I have the feeling that this works pretty well.
That is why I propose to use just the same system, offer clearly distinguishing criteria in the description and if I could only add the example pictures I think it should be relatively clear. And this is why I thought of only 4 grades.
However, I would welcome additions on how to further clarify the criteria as this is only my personal guess before discussion.
I keep trying to upload the pictures, this might be a helpful visualization. GPSfriend