State of the road network (was: Going against community consensus?)

I am not sure about these changesets:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/29273863
https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/29156862
https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/29228744

The upgrading of one provincial road to trunk, which is reserved for National Motor-roads, along with unexplained node deletions, and no comments, make these changesets by JayCBR quite suspicious because it appears to go against community consensus.

Thoughts?

I’ve seen that you left comments on the change-sets. Have you tried to contact the user directly? Is he not responding event though he is currently active?
He should respond by the time that a second opinion exists and give an answer about the “CORRECT NUMBERING ACCORDING TO OFFICIAL SOURCES” comment on his change-sets.

And on this link http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Vandalism among other things, it is stated in the General Guidelines that

“If the edits are dubious but it can’t be proved to be incorrect then we should contact the person and ask for some additional information. If we don’t get a reasonable response (or gets no response) and the dubious edits continue and there are not a good number of balancing clearly positive contributions then we should look to prove at least one bad edit and may then come to the decision in discussion with others that it is appropriate to revert the change-set in question and potentially all changesets by that person.”

I have contacted him once by PM, because the changeset comments system have gone wonky before. It was on 8 March 2015 at 16:30.

I do my best to document all the compatible sources I use, including legislative texts that are exempt from Greek copyright law (Paragraph 5 of Article II, Law 2121 of 1993).

hello i only use the official government document from 1963
and fixed all the nodes i had problems with
so no vandalism here

Hola JayCBR,

This is quite a long message, so take your time…

Thank you so much for replying to one of my many messages about how we were not sure what source you were using. We were getting worried about your edits because of your delay in replying to the messages I have sent, asking for additional comment. I take it that you were using Greek law ΦΕΚ Β 319/23.7.1963, which is not in copyright as legislative texts are exempt. However, it is important to take later developments on the road network into account, especially of the realignments and new motorways.

Thank you also for showing interest in trying to untangle the mess that is the Greek road network. If you are new to me, I have been to the country many times before joining OSM, and I started taking the road system seriously back in 2013 when a user in SkyscraperCity, ea1969, confirmed to me that the provincial road numbers had a numbering system (http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=103224934): the legislative source was ΦΕΚ 47 Α/8.2.1956. My subsequent research confirmed that such a system still exists, according to regional legislation such as ΦΕΚ B 1866/14.09.2007, ΦΕΚ B 2227/20.11.2007 and ΦΕΚ B 1932/26.9.2007 (all exempt from copyright under the 1993 law).

I am still in touch with ea1969 as user Antje on SkyscraperCity: you should, in your free time, browse through the thread at http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=441395, from page 71, to see how I’ve and other have been trying to figure out the current state of the network. If you do have questions for ea1969, please do post a message there. We have a general shortage of people who treat the Greek road numbering system with as much care as I do.

Indeed, I was not the first one to use National Road numbers on OpenStreetMap, but when I started taking the matter seriously the progress on OSM was very patchy, and not as many villages were connected with tertiary roads as they are now. At the time there were very little tangible evidence to prove where the National and Provincial roads were, and it was only with me that progress on mapping the road network really stepped up. The work is still pretty much in progress, as I am still doing in depth research into the situation.

I must warn in advance that the road numbering system in Greece is a nightmare, even though that national road numbers do appear in other maps. I currently live in the UK, whose road system is so well organised that there is little dispute there, but in Greece much of the road system is based on destinations with road numbers making occasional appearances (if they are in the right places, that is).

All the edits I have done to this point have been in good faith, based on what I have got so far. There is still obviously a lot to be done to get to the bottom of this but I am hoping that the outcome will be the most complete road map of Greece, something a lot better than others. This is why OSM mappers should not give up trying.

In respect of the military roads, I have merely complied with the guidelines at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway:International_equivalence (scroll to Greece), but if you complain that they are not worthy of primary route status then that current guideline is awfully wrong. On the other hand I’ve seen national roads not to always be a four-or-more-lane divided highway (at least two lanes per direction), particularly with the EO3 between Eleusis and Thebes.

Despite the complexity of the situation, OpenStreetMap is unable to suggest that the road numbering system be ignored and banned from the database because they still appear on many road signs: plus, road numbers are a fact of life in nearly every country.

Therefore, I am advising that we both halt the road numbering edits (except fro the most critical ones) until we replace the current guideline, to which I was merely complying with. If merely complying with the guideline leads to undesirable results then it is clear that the guideline in question is now no longer working as I have expected. The proposed replacement is at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Amaroussi#Greek_road_hierarchy_review.

Also, I speak English as a matter of logistical convenience because of me dealing with many countries, and so to get as many people to understand what I am trying to say.

On 16 March 2015 I was given a copy of ELSTAT’s Registry of National Highways from 1998 (Full title in Greek: Μητρώο Εθνικών Οδών της Ελλάδος, Αθήνα 1998). May my fellow mappers kindly please double-confirm that this is in the public domain according to Greek copyright law (Paragraph 5 of Article II, Law 2121 of 1993) on the grounds that it is an official administrative text of a State organisation?

Thank you in advance.

Hi JayCBR,

I did not intend to say that you ever recommended the removal of National road numbers, but other users may think so, given the complexity of the network.

I am particularly not sure if the EO1 between Gefyra (near Thessaloniki) and Alexandreia could be an old national road if it is connected to the EO4. Additionally, bear in mind that there has to be a non-motorway alternative for banned traffic: that is why I am concerned about the replacement of EO1 with PEO1 on parts, but not all, of the route.

Sadly, I cannot agree on promoting National roads to trunk at this time because it is practice in many European countries to limit such use to signed motor-roads. In the UK, primary routes are only green because it directly the next level in the hierarchy after motorways, and there we do not use motor-road signs.

Amaroussi.

according to the Registry of National Roads of 1998 (i managed to find a scanned copy)
the original national road is named { 1 } with new sections named {1α}
the parts of {1α} that have become motorway are A1
so i hope this clears all

I think that would clear the mystery over the new road between Gefyra and Chalastra, yet a lot of uncertainty remains over how we should map the road network.

I noticed something that really concerns me about JayCBR’s editing style that I feel may bring concern to the Greek community, if there is one: for example, way 31640151 (http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/31640151/history) has been comfortably EO8 for six years until JayCBR changed it to EO104: I do not remember EO104 from the 1998 list being in widespread usage as much as the EO8.