Hello purplefractal (what a nice name :-)) , thanks for pointing that out. You’re right, land parcel data is, in principle, available. Unfortunately, however – and this is just my impression – it is hardly ever used when defining land use areas. At the moment, it seems to me that the available aerial photographs are almost the sole basis for this work. It would be fantastic if the cadastral data were available in OSM as a kind of reference map layer. Then the level of detail and precision that DaveF is hoping for would have a good chance of being implemented. But at the moment, when it comes to defining overarching land use (residential, commercial, industrial areas), it’s more a case of free artistic creation than the precise recording of property boundaries, isn’t it?
The best solution would be to incorporate the cadastral data – which is, after all, public data – directly into the OSM map; then this 'artwork' would become obsolete. Does any of you know why this isn’t being done, or what’s preventing it?
Regardless of the approach of defining land-use boundaries on a plot-by-plot basis, however, I continue to champion a neighbourhood-based definition of land use and thus the use of the road network as a natural boundary (as I said, standard practice in urban and regional planning). So it is more a matter of principle which path to take here.
On the subject of usability, I can see the point about the 'ungluing' issue, although I don’t have much trouble with it myself – I’ve got used to it. I still think it’s a good idea to connect neighbourhood boundaries directly to roads for the reasons mentioned above: a) to avoid creating gaps of ‘no man’s land’ between roads and properties, and b) to avoid creating visual ‘street canyons’ on the OSM map, which contradict the character of the road as a line and suggest a surface area. Polygons and lines simply behave differently. However, I am not a dogmatist; I can continue to move property boundaries out of the way (without connecting them) in order to capture underlying, hidden features relevant to the map.
Have a lovely day and happy mapping! :-)

OK, what is your aim when you define areas on the OSM map?
a) To define land-use zones in order to give map users an idea of how a town or region is organised in terms of land use.
b) To record every plot of land with its specific use.
Your answer suggests that you are aiming for option "b".
However, this seems to me to be virtually impossible to implement. This is for the following reasons:
1) Information regarding precise property boundaries and their primary use is generally not available to mappers, or is available only to a very limited extent in terms of time and location. This applies less to areas such as parks, car parks, playgrounds, pedestrian zones, lakes, fields, meadows, etc., which can be mapped more or less accurately from aerial photographs, but to a very great extent to areas such as residential, commercial or industrial zones.
2) Deriving these property boundaries from aerial photographs is purely a matter of guesswork, as fences, hedges or walls are not always recognisable and, moreover, are inaccurate indicators of property boundaries. Since ‘guessing’ without a factual basis is out of the question for you – as I have learnt – aerial photographs would therefore not serve as a basis for defining land uses on property level, particularly for residential, commercial or industrial areas.
3) Furthermore, properties often have multiple uses; for example, larger residential estates (on a single plot!) consist of both residential and commercial areas. Here, the use would therefore need to be defined at building level. But even at the building level, this would not be sufficient in many cases, as buildings also have multiple uses (shops on the ground floor, residential units on the floors above).

Consequently, OSM can only meaningfully provide a land-use view for residential, commercial or industrial areas as ‘neighbourhood land-use’. And in urban and regional planning, the structure of neighbourhoods is always based on the road network. In other words, roads serve as the boundaries for recording higher-level land-use categories. And if you do not wish to start defining roads as polygons, then land-use areas do not touch the roads at the pavement, at the kerb or at the centreline of the road. They only touch them as a line, at defined nodes.

Hi, I love your persistence :-). It’s good to discuss matters of principle. However, I still see a problem with your dogmatic approach: it would make navigation for pedestrians and cyclists in OSM impossible. Imagine a simple situation: at a street intersection, pedestrian paths converge from all four directions. On the road, just like on the sidewalks, there are no signs marking an “official” road crossing. If we follow your dogmatic approach, there’s no need to mark a road crossing here. That would make it impossible to plan a route from one side of the street across the intersection to the other side, let alone navigate it automatically. Hiking trails could then only be marked on roads, not on footpaths or sidewalks, since those would constantly be interrupted by gaps. That would result in an OSM exclusively for drivers. Is that what you have in mind, or how would you approach the problem?

Sorry, but you’re completely wrong there. Please take a look at the description of an ‘informal pedestrian crossing’ in the OSM definitions, and you’ll see that this is exactly what I’m talking about. If only official pedestrian crossings were mapped, pedestrian navigation would be impossible or practically useless, as it would result in a multitude of detours that no normal person would take. Official pedestrian crossings account for only a fraction of the road crossings used. Between a free road crossing and an official pedestrian crossing, there is therefore the ‘informal crossing’, which defines a point where it is very likely that a large number of pedestrians will cross the road. This applies in the UK just as much as in other parts of the world.

A road is a line no area. It has no center or edge. In this regard, roads are the logical bondaries of commercial areas as well as for other areas that define the various city zones of use. I would rather call freely drawn areas of use with no logical bondaries „poor mapping“.

It doesn't look right when the circle is distorted. Thanks for pointing that out. It's been corrected.

You’re right, there isn’t an official pedestrian crossing at this point. But pedestrian crossings are often informal crossings. This means that pedestrians don’t just use the designated crossings. In some places, informal crossing tends to occur, for example when a road divides a flow of pedestrians and the route can be shortened by crossing informally. Therefore, in my view, it makes sense to record such informal crossings as well, as they reflect a more realistic use of the route. Of course, this should not encourage unsafe road crossings. In this specific case, one might therefore debate whether my ‘shortcut’ reflects realistic usage or is more likely to encourage undesirable crossings.

Hello, I know that adding polygons to lines can sometimes cause problems. However, this isn’t always the case. In most cases, it helps to make the map clearer and makes editing easier.

Damn, not again :-( - shouldn't happen. Good thing you're keeping an eye out. Thanks for letting me know, and thanks for the correction. Have a very good day.

Hi , thanks for keeping an eye out, and sorry for breaking a navigation path again. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to fix this gap. I tried, but without success. I guess I'm having trouble figuring out the right settings. Could you lend a hand again? Thanks in advance for your help.

Thanks for your comments - in this case as well :-). I'll keep that in mind and add "sidewalk=separate" to my updates.
P.S.: I fully agree that mapping separate sidewalks doesn't work when incomplete.

Thanks for the repair. I looked online for information about the signage position on the Slate Trail in Llanberis, but unfortunately couldn't find anything. I think you're right—we'll just have to wait until someone on-site checks the trail routing.

Hi Andy, thanks for pointing that out. Sorry if I caused that break. It wasn't my intention. Can you fix it? I've never edited trails before. With the sidewalks and footpaths I’ve added, we’d just need to decide whether the trail should remain on the road or be assigned to one of the sidewalks. The south sidewalk seems particularly suitable to me, since it appears to be a bit wider and has been repaved in recent weeks. But I can't say right now exactly how the trail is marked at that spot.

Hi Phil, hope you are fine.
Please rest assured that it is by no means my intention for my map additions to be repressive or patronizing in any way. Your so called "fake crossing" is called in OSM "informal crossing" (crossing=informal). It is an established commonly used feature for pedestrian crossings.
When you talk about "unnecessary complication to pedestrian routing", what do you mean by that? Without sidewalks and pedestrian crossings, pedestrian navigation is only possible on roads, regardless of whether the roads are actually suitable for pedestrian use. Furthermore, manual route planning for pedestrians is made more difficult, as without separate sidewalks it is impossible to tell whether a road has suitable sidewalks or whether one has to walk on the road itself.
To improve transparency in this area and to expand the practical applications of the OSM map - such as the use of OSM data by navigation and route-planning apps - OSM offers a wide range of features designed to depict the various aspects of pedestrian use as realistically as possible. Nevertheless, the design of a map remains an abstraction of reality, involving compromises in its representation, such as those discussed separate sidewalks and pedestrian crossings.
In my view, the complexity of OSM data and maps continues to grow. New, increasingly high-resolution aerial and satellite images make it easier and easier to identify even the smallest details, such as streetlights or fire hydrants, with pinpoint accuracy. I see no development to limit this growing complexity on the data collection side. If it becomes necessary for technical or display reasons, OSM leaves this up to its data users - such as navigation apps -which can then filter out unwanted data or provide users with filtering options.
Best regards.

Hi trigpoint, you are right. I added an informal crossing to allow the direct way.

Hi Phil, pedestrian ways separated or defined by the road parameters is a bigger discussion. There are good arguments on either side. I am a strong believer that pedestrian ways should by separated to allow more detailed route planning for pedestrians. A key part of this separation is that road crossings are shown, either formal ones (which are markt) as well as informal ones (mostly seen in my eddings).
PS: I was motivated for my map changes as I spend some days in Tremadog about a week ago.
PPS: Most of the cities in central Europe as well as the bigger cities in UK apply the separation approach as well as the positioning of the informal crossings at a road crossing, as this is the point where the mayority of the pedestrians would cross a road.

Hi lostmike, thanks for pointing that out to me. My mistake. I was changing it as this road category is used for „speed lanes“ in e.g. Germany, Austria and Switzerland. A road that allows high Speed either inner city or outside. Again thanks for your feedback.

Hallo tf66, um welchen Weg geht es? Da der Änderungssatz mehrere Änderungen enthält kann ich leider nicht erkennen auf welche Änderung sich deine Anmerkung bezieht.

Hi, bin mir keiner Schandtat bewusst. :-( Sieht auf jeden Fall gut aus, was du korrigiert hast. :)

Dito. :-)