OpenStreetMap
I’m presently targeting things that have inappropriate ‘layer’ entries in my area.e.g.
highway, layer -5 … no tunnel/covered etc …
park layer -2
I assume this way done for rendering issues. The areas look to be best served with multipolygons.
There do not appear to be tools to find these inappropriate layers, so I’m using a simple text editor to find them., then JOSM to do the editing.
Discussion
Comment from maxerickson on 12 April 2014 at 23:18
Keep Right reports some similar things (not sure what it would do with -5 with no other tag):
http://keepright.ipax.at/report_map.php?zoom=10&lat=40.72381&lon=-74.00086&layers=B0T&ch=0%2C231%2C232&show_ign=1&show_tmpign=1
Comment from Warin61 on 13 April 2014 at 02:27
Thanks maxerickson .. Useful.
It picks up highways with different layers joining. … some of ‘mine’ are layer -5 to layer 0 … extreme disparity. http://keepright.ipax.at/report_map.php?zoom=10&lat=40.72381&lon=-74.00086&layers=B0T&ch=0%2C231%2C232&show_ign=1&show_tmpign=1 I can understand going form one layer to the next .. but not zooming from -5 to 0!
Does not pick up parks/industrial/parking layers .. so still using the text editor to find those.
I’ve a few to do so it will take some time.
Comment from Vincent de Phily on 14 April 2014 at 23:19
While it is nicer to follow these best-practices (don’t tag layer 0, tag short distances only, use <0 for tunnels and >0 for bridges, etc), there is nothing fundamentally wrong with these weird layer values. A layer=-5 doesn’t necessarily correspond to a tunnel or covered way. At worse, these cause data bloat. I wouldn’t go fix that unless I’m also doing other (necessary) fixes in the area.
Comment from Warin61 on 15 April 2014 at 00:38
I find them confusing… And for some of them I’ve found that there are not tags that precisely describe what is there e.g. arcade!. The highway at -5 is presently being reconstructed .. and was wrong before construction started (the western side one way at layer 0, while the eastern side (the other direction) was at layer 1).. However I’m letting that one go until construction stops .. Xmas? I think if the layer tag has been used inappropriately then it may also point to other inaccuracies?
Comment from Vincent de Phily on 15 April 2014 at 09:17
I suppose if you got confused while looking at them it means you were already in the process of fixing stuff in the area, so that would tick the “dont change them unless you’re also changing other stuff as well” box.
The “this user did something weird, maybe he did other mistakes that I can correct” argument is valid, but only if you can actually find stuff to fix. If you’re armchair-mapping and only fixing odd-but-correct tagging, you’ve removed the “something needs improving here” hint that other mappers, perhaps local ones, might have used to do more substantial improvements.
Just don’t go hunting for unusual layer values if that’s the only thing you’re going to change. It’s like contributing a whitespace-only commit to software code… Not very usefull. It may be good to take, but there are probably better uses of your time.
Just my opinion, not an instruction; don’t listen to me if you reaaaly want to do those kinds of cleanups :p