Proposal talk:Trailblazed

marked_trail* usage

Usage of marked_trail* in Slovakia is now deprecated in favour of Relation:route. As I understand it, it was indeed originally used for marked trails, but as more tags were needed they were replaced with Relation:route. The remaining old tags are in the process of cleaning up, as per WikiProject_Slovakia/Hiking_routes. AlfonZ 12:39, 10 August 2010 (BST)

As marked_trail has abandoned, I support this proposal. Following a current discussion on german mailing list it showed that Relation:route is sometimes to cumbersome just to flag if a path is marked (which is just yes or no). So having a simple yes|no tag is a good idea. -- Fichtennadel 07:11, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Licence problems

In France, most of the hiking paths are marked by the national hiking federation. The problem for OSM is that the federation keeps the copyright on the route itself, on its name and ref, and on the symbol. So it seems impossible to add these routes in OSM. But maybe tagging the way with trailblazed=yes wouldn't be a copyright violation... Any advice? Damouns 08:15, 23 August 2010 (BST)

Wow, this looks restrictive indeed, they have the reserved trademark sign even on their painted marks. I don't think the two letters GR fall under copyright, they should be covered by trademark. In which case it is easy to omit them and just take the number. But IANAL. --Ipofanes 13:11, 26 August 2010 (BST)

Sorry for the confusion between copyright and trademark. This problem has been discussed here in French: we should wait before adding anything concerning these pathes (and their name, number, colors, anything). But maybe indicating that "there is a trailblaze here" without any precision could be OK... Damouns 09:20, 30 August 2010 (BST)

Since it's apparently a registered trademark, you should be able to query the registration office for which categories it applies to. Actually, the search seems to be here: INPI . Search with Déposant / titulaire. The ones relevant to this that I found easily were Numéro : 3283810, 1241077, 1294468, 1236674. They have reserved the trademark (the two letter symbol, white or yellow text on red background) to a whole lot of fields of endeavour; didn't bother to check which of them would apply to maps. No mention of numbers, no mention of routes. Maybe someone else will find them, if they exist. As the picture linked above showed (it's gone now), the ® was right after their registered trademark.

You'd have to confirm that the french trademark law has a clause similar to (some?) other countries (free translation): "the exclusive rights do not apply to a part of the registered symbol, if that part of the trademark would not be valid for registration in itself". That means, basically, that even if they did register all individual route signs, the numeric part would not be, as it's not "identifiable" and there's a whole lot of previous uses for short numbers; apparently a longer number might be valid for a trademark protection (for an example, see Cologne 4711). Just stick operator=Fédération française de randonnée and ref=nn on the relation. Alv 11:53, 30 August 2010 (BST)

Trailblazed Specification

The current trailblazed=yes proposition is not specific enough. On a single way there can be multiple trailblaze signs. I have seen them for hikers, mountainbiker, cyclers and cars. The trailblazed=* could be extended with optional namespace, such as hiking, bicycle or mtb, thus giving for instance trailblazed:hiking=yes. The same values as route=* can be used.

This scheme allows me to create maps with trailblazed highways for a certain purpose, without needing defined routes. In such maps one can add the necessary guideposts by adding for instance hiking=yes as a guidepost (information=guidepost) tag. Also in this way it is possible to contribute to possible routes bit by bit, without having to implement the entire route. It also circumvents any trademark issues, by just recording what one sees in the field and not knowing anything about a route.

Another option is to add an extra tag to a highway, such as hiking=yes, but this seems to generic. And it is furthermore not clear that it should apply to the trailblaze. --Aleene (talk) 16:10, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't think marking the ways with hiking=yes is a good idea. Would easily be interpreted as an access tag. user:Tractor 21 July 2015

Good point. hiking should refer to the trailblazed aspect and is not an access= tag. --aleene (talk) 18:59, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

I think your best solution would be to use namespaces, as you already suggest: trailblazed:hiking=yes. We already use piste:trailblazed=yes for (nordic) ski trails (piste:*=* is the namespace for things related to pistes/skiing/ winter activities). Tractor 23 July 2015

The major hiking routes in my area (Toronto, Canada) are blazed with paint or other marks on trees and utility poles. The two with which I am most familiar use white for the main trail and blue for side trails. Marked ski trails often use plastic markers in a variety of colours. I'd like to propose that instead of (Tag|trailblazed|yes) the tag take the form (Tag|blazed|colour). If it is a tag on a route relation or on a Path, do we really need to include "trail"? Also colour would allow users to differentiate between paths that cross or overlap each other. -- User:Greying_Geezer 03:00, 08 Dec 2016 (UTC)

Cairns, poles

Wikipedia names cairns as an alternative to blazes. As cairns are somehow transient and informal I would not take them as trailblazed=yes.

Wikipedia names poles together with cairns in one section. But I regard poles as persistent and formal. Most ski tracks and a lot of hiking trails (e.g. E4 on Crete) are marked with poles. This would clearly apply for trailblazed=yes.

Maybe this should be clarified on the main page. --GerdHH (talk) 05:27, 8 May 2016 (UTC)