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I am a bit reluctant to ask this because of the negative response to a similar question about abandoned rails. I have encountered a lot of abandoned rails that are no longer visible in any way, including personal survey. Some are not labeled as abandoned, but go through shopping malls and subdivisions. I delete them. I am doing my best to clean up TIGER in many areas in the Midwest (now via Bing).

There are marshes depicted where houses now stand. While I might like to know this if I were in the market for a house there, the history is not relevant to the map.

There are also proposed roads rendered on Mapnik. They also don't exist, and the political groups that proposed them are gone and there are no funds to make them. Should they be on the Map?

asked 02 Jun '11, 14:50

Tom%20Layo's gravatar image

Tom Layo
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Please consider shortening your question to just the relevant question - the final paragraph would be sufficient.

(02 Jun '11, 16:31) Andy Allan

The final paragraph was not the relevant question, which is: Should the Map display non-existent features?

(03 Jun '11, 12:26) Tom Layo

11

In my opinion: no.

There is some talk about an OpenStreetMap covering history and there are some tags floating around, but nothing that I'd call usable. My conclusion is that OpenStreetMap should reflect the reality as it is now as best as possible and only that.

Proposed and planned features as well as features currently under construction are a bit of an exception to this rule as they might very well reflect the reality once the printed out (or otherwise not updated) map is a year or two old. If the proposal has been superseeded or is clearly not going to happen I don't see any point of it beeing in OpenStreetMap. If people want to discuss about 17 different speculative proposals they are welcome to use OpenStreetMap as a base map and add their proposals in some kind of overlay.

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answered 02 Jun '11, 15:09

petschge's gravatar image

petschge
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A reasonable criteria for planned roads would be that the plans are somehow official, i.e. changing the plan significantly before actual construction would require a new administrative decision. But there are no formal rules about it. A plan someone just came up with for a new road, should not, IMO, be tagged as a highway=*.

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answered 03 Jun '11, 08:58

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alv
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  • railway=disused means a railway which is no longer used but where the track and infrastructure remains in place.
  • railway=abandoned is the course of a former railway which has been abandoned and the track and infrastucture removed. The course may be still recognized through embankments, cuttings, bridges, tunnel and rolling or straight ways.

I think, if some traces or still there (even not rails), the tag shoul be railway=abandoned, but of course, if there ist no a shopping centre, ..., remove it.

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answered 16 Apr '12, 08:37

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Männedorf
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question asked: 02 Jun '11, 14:50

question was seen: 5,271 times

last updated: 16 Apr '12, 08:37

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