Use of "tertiary_link"

Since trying to fix a load of errors in Thailand using Osmose, Im getting a lot of instances of highway=tertiary_link being used for rural roads.
There is a cluster here by way of an example ~
http://www.openstreetmap.org/edit#map=13/17.4240/103.3203

In the Map features wiki, we are reminded that the “link” description is really reserved for sliproads and ramps, and Osmose does throw up long sections of link as an error.

For my mind, if you are tracing from quality images, then make a guess as to Tertiary or Unclassified (Minor). If its has a visible white line down the middle of the road, call it tertiary… if not, then use the latter. Of course the start and finish of the road gives a clue too.

And finally, while I’m groaning, how about when u add a road, if you have traced it, then hit the “B” shortcut button (in Potlatch), and at least it puts a source tag in. This tells everyone the way was traced, and therefore some local knowledge is probably missing.

Cheers, Russ.

Again, I refer you to user:EndlessRoundabout. He sometimes uses tertiary link when tagging a connecting road between two tertiary highways no matter how long that “link” is. I tried to discourage this practice because I don’t agree with it.

I agree with AlaskaDave on this, tertiary_link is for ramps and sliproads, not for long roads going between tertiary roads.

I disagree with this, unclassified roads are for bigger roads not classified by the government - e.g. having no ref. If we start adding the tertiary tags by guesswork, we’ll end up with lots of roads classified as tertiary, with no way of knowing if is correct or not.

I’d still say that if you don’t know the ref, consider it unclassified - later when we learn it has a ref, upgrade it.

I personally stopped doing this, many roads quickly ends up having many sources like “source=Bing;GPS;Mapbox Sat;Survey” and now it is unclear which change comes from which source. I add the source to my changeset, and if you view the history you can see what changes comes from which source.

I’ve seen some discussions on this topic elsewhere which also argues against the source tag, unfortunately I am unable to find the links right now.

Though if other people find it useful, I’ll start adding them again.

How about using FIXME verify on ground then?

Sadly, “tertiary_link” is often used when the tertiary “connects” major highways with even a long distance (several km) between. I saw it also with Indonesia, where the island of Lombok was full fo tertairy_link some time ago (don’t know the current situation). Since there’s no difference in map display for a “normal” highway" and a “…_link”, such mis-tagged roads are hard to spot on the map.

As for the source tag, I normally use it with the changest only. A FIXME just to denote that the road was traced from some imagery is not a good idea: more than 90% of the roads in South Thailand would need that tag.

I know it was me who brought osmose in.

A word of warning first:
Please use the reports of osmose with caution. It was developed by the french community. So a lot of assumptions of what is correct are based on how the french community is mapping. Some tests might not be suitable for Thailand.

So if we believe this check is not suitable for Thailand we can disable it.

The roads given in the link in the first post are tagged wrong in my opinion. They are probably unclassified. Maybe they even have a ref number and can be treated as tertiary roads.