Author: TomH
[Added to the original trac issue at 11.10pm, Wednesday, 21st September 2011]

I'm really not sure we want to special case something this like this - we don't really want the server code to become an endless series of rules to match specific tags and pick out a "name" to use.

Author: smsm1
[Added to the original trac issue at 11.14pm, Wednesday, 21st September 2011]

I think it would be much better to tag it as name, as that's what it is, rather than that info into the note tag.

Author: ghia
[Added to the original trac issue at 10.09am, Thursday, 22nd September 2011]

Well, it is specified in the wiki as such

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Cycle_Node_Network_Tagging

on the rationale that these routes do not have a real name, they are simply connections between node 1 and node 2.
To make sense out of these routes a note tag is used with the from - to

JOSM is using this note tag as name in its lists, so relations can be quickly indentified.
It would be very helpful if the OSM website did this also.

Checked out Potlatch and it seems to be missing this feature too (Heidestraat).

http://www.openstreetmap.org/edit?editor=potlatch2&lat=50.89662&lon=4.64321&zoom=18&way=22715987

Also nice would be that when nodes that have a reference number, these numbers are listed aside the node or a symbol (eg a round with a number in) marks that the node contains a reference tag, a bit in the way POI are indicated.

Author: TomH
[Added to the original trac issue at 10.41am, Thursday, 22nd September 2011]

The fact that somebody has written something on the wiki has very little value. More so when it's clearly insane like attaching special meaning to a "note" tag.

Equally, just because somebody managed to persuade JOSM to special case this doesn't mean that other people should.

Author: ghia
[Added to the original trac issue at 11.00am, Thursday, 22nd September 2011]

Well, meanwhile, there are already thousands of these 'special' cases.

http://cycling.lonvia.de/?zoom=9&lat=51.41267&lon=4.77635

All the orange routes (from one crossing node to another)

Author: ghia
[Added to the original trac issue at 11.08am, Thursday, 22nd September 2011]

Not as widespread as cycling node networks, but it applies on hike node networks too:

http://hiking.lonvia.de/?zoom=9&lat=51.24266&lon=4.63327

Again, all little orange segments represent a relation affected by this.

Author: Richard
[Added to the original trac issue at 11.40am, Friday, 23rd September 2011]

This is definitely an abuse of the note tag, which is meant for survey notes by mappers. There's no way Potlatch 2 will get support for this.

Author: Eimai
[Added to the original trac issue at 9.40am, Tuesday, 11th October 2011]

Using the name tag would be an abuse. These routes simply don't have names, the networks do. Sure we can invent some pretty names to be shown in the relation lists, but then we'd need to special case every renderer that wants to actually render these routes to discard names of just these networks. That's not the better option.

Author: Polyglot
[Added to the original trac issue at 6.39pm, Wednesday, 12th October 2011]

It's not as insane as it may seem. Those notes are there to help the (human) editors of the cycle node routes. The connections between the nodes in these networks simply don't have a name. The nodes are identified by a number. The connections between them are referred to as xx-yy, but they are not ref(erence)s either.

This has been decided many years ago and has been done consistently in at least 3 countries. The fact is that it is extremely inconvenient to edit these relations with Potlatch. Another fact is that it is not very easy to wean people working on those routes off of Potlatch, so it would be nice if Potlatch could help out its users by doing what JOSM has been doing for years now: show the note tag when no name tag is present.

A fallback from name TO ref TO note

in that order is all that is needed. I don't expect there to be demand for more than that.

It would be a great service to the users of Potlatch(2) and it's less INSANE than it may seem.

Just my 2 cents.

Polyglot

Author: Polyglot
[Added to the original trac issue at 12.32am, Monday, 14th November 2011]

I regret to inform you that I had to mention Potlatch2 in an unfavourable light on the following wiki page:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Cycle_Node_Network_Tagging

All the way at the bottom. The widespread use since the beginning, of the note tag is, of course, documented in the section about the route relations. Apparently it has been suggested by Andy Allan at one point in time when we started to map these routes.

Polyglot

Author: Richard
[Added to the original trac issue at 12.40am, Monday, 14th November 2011]

Blackmail. Awesome!

Author: Polyglot
[Added to the original trac issue at 12.42am, Monday, 14th November 2011]

Replying to [comment:12 Richard]:

Blackmail. Awesome!

I can try to herd/convince people to start using JOSM or even Merkaartor, but there will always be contributors who want to change something quickly (myself included when on a different computer) or who simply can't make the transition. It's not a very small step, I realise that. So there will always be people who will work on those route relations with Potlatch and they are stuck with looking at meaningless large integer numbers. And it will usually be the people who can use all the help they can get, since they may just have started out on OSM.

Author: Polyglot
[Added to the original trac issue at 12.48am, Monday, 14th November 2011]

I don't consider this blackmail. Denouncing is the term I'd had chosen :-)

Sorry to keep stirring in this. Of course, instead of simply falling back to showing the note tag, when no name is available, you could try to implement what jttt (Jiri from Slowakia) implemented very recently in JOSM. The ability to cherrypick what tags the displayed names are composed of, but where to give people a chance to configure that, might be tricky. I wouldn't know, I use Potlatch only very occasionally anymore, but I do think it's important that it exists for newcomers and for people wanting to edit when away from their own computers or computers they aren't allowed to install SW on.

Author: Polyglot
[Added to the original trac issue at 9.23pm, Tuesday, 15th November 2011]

Replying to [comment:12 Richard]:

Blackmail. Awesome!

Whether you do something about this or not, my bank account will remain in the same sorry state it was before. The note tag is used on > 10.000 route relations in this way across at least 3 countries for routes of the cycle node network. The situation is rapidly getting worse, since the same way of tagging is used for hiking/foot and equestrian routes. Those networks have many more nodes * ~1.4 routes/node since they work on a finer grid. People are resorting to putting what belongs in those note tags into the name field, which is incorrect usage of the name tag and thus tagging for the 'software used as an editor'. I am in the process of cleaning up these route relations and to make them all follow the same rules. The rules that have been specified many years ago on the wiki. Not a random page, but all the pages describing the CNN rcn relations describe them this way.

Of course cleaning up is not all that I'm doing with those routes. They all get vetted, inspected, corrected and soon it will be able to do automatic Quality Control on them. This is already possible for all the routes of the entire collection of networks in Belgium. And it works great. I find mistake introduced by human editors who recombine ways, or who remove members without replacing them. Continuity of those routes is checked in two directions, etc.

So, in part it is my doing that human contributors are looking at meaningless large integers and this is why I feel responsible to keep stirring in this kettle.

Also, I don't enjoy having to badmouth your product on the wiki. The least I could do, I believe, is to let you know the comment is there. You can always remove it from the wiki, if you like.

So, in the long run, I'm trying to make sure the human contributors have an enjoyable experience using Potlatch2 and I wanted to let you know that use of another tag has been discussed and has been rejected. So we are all stuck with this usage of the note tag, since those routes really don't have names. The note tags are there for the human editors contributing to the map, so there is nothing insane about their use.

Jo (probably the last words I'll sully on this subject)

Author: Frankl2009
[Added to the original trac issue at 12.17am, Tuesday, 22nd November 2011]

Replying to [comment:12 Richard]:

Blackmail. Awesome!
(Please, Richard. Blackmail is such an ugly word. ..... )

I am not sure anything will have much effect now, seeing the turn the discussion has taken, but here goes.

As a loyal Potlatch user (thanks Richard and others) doing work on the cycle node networks in The Netherlands, I'd like to say that it would actually be helpful to see the data from the note field as well as the relation number for our cycle node networks (and the walking networks which are node based too).

Using Note to indicate the to/from node is the established way of doing this for the networks in Holland, Belgium and parts of Germany. It wasn't just some random mapper who messed things up with yet more wiki fiddling.

The note is there to help mappers'' find and work with the right relation. I personally prefer to do that in Potlatch where I can see what I am doing (but that's just me). I disagree with the "it belongs in the name" argument: these are node networks; a route in a node network here simply doesn't have a ''name like "23-32"; it's just a line on a map between two nodes and a series of signs on the roadside directing you from one node to the other. The networks, now they have names, written on the information boards and road signage.

Mitigating factors: Having said all that, I must admit that with the aid of a pencil and pad to note the relation number in play, I actually used Potlatch 1.4 (and still do) to map hundreds of these things. As long as my short-term memory holds up, I can remember the last three digits when I need to pick the right relation from the list. So I've found a way to live without it. (For some time I tracked everything in a spreadsheet on a second monitor as well, but I realise this is overkill.) Where a name does come in handy is if you need to do some quick maintenance on a route which has changed (or been messed up).

So, yes, please do consider it. (Or at least find other arguments: with respect, this is not abuse of the note field, imho).

Author: JDub
[Added to the original trac issue at 12.14pm, Wednesday, 22nd August 2012]

Hi Potlatch Devs,

What do you suggest we do with relations that inherently don't have a name or ref? OIDs are somewhat long to memorize.

• Jw

Author: Richard
[Added to the original trac issue at 12.38pm, Wednesday, 22nd August 2012]

This one got fixed a long time ago - P2 now generates automated 'from-to' names in this case.

Author: JDub
[Added to the original trac issue at 9.28am, Thursday, 23rd August 2012]

Ok, thanks. I prefer that solution to using "note".

There's some comments on our mailing list that this doesn't always work, but I'll first try to get some concrete examples before creating a new ticket.