OpenStreetMap
There are two paths in Tenerife that run from the cemetery near Igueste de San Andres, to the old Semaforo up on the mountain. The new path is signposted, well-constructed, and takes a long route to get there.
There’s also an old path, probably used by the workers when the Semaforo was operating. It’s a rough path which is hard to find at the beginning but apart from that is well-defined. It is exposed in places, and the handrail is missing in one of the exposed places. The old path takes the short route to get there and is quite spectacular. But it requires great care and is only for adventurous hikers.
I discovered the old path when I saw it on OSM. But recently I noticed that the old path had been deleted, with the comment “Deleted a dangerous path”.
This leaves me conflicted. Philosophically I believe that if something exists on the ground, it should be mapped. But of course I would not wish for anyone to see the map and expect to find a well-maintained path there. The SAC scale is tagged as “Demanding mountain hiking” which seems reasonable to me, but the SAC scale is not reflected in the rendering on openstreetmap.org.
Anyway, I have un-deleted the way (158925363).
I should mention also that there are hundreds of adventurous paths on Tenerife that would need to be deleted if “dangerous” paths should not be on the map.
Discussion
Comment from Warin61 on 24 October 2015 at 22:03
Agree .. if it is ‘on the ground’ then it should be there.
There is a walking difficulty tag that can be used
sac_scale=*
You may also want to get in touch with the mapper who deleted the way and let them know …
www.openstreetmap.org/user/[user_name] … the user_name should be in lower case ..
Comment from Alan Trick on 26 October 2015 at 04:16
I think deleting a defined path is a bad idea because someone might go map it again without realizing why it was removed. If there is a trail that is closed, and it’s not really a place that anyone should or would go regardless of their technical skill, removing the “highway” key, or changing it to “disused:highway” seems better to me, and then future mappers will be able to see why it’s not displayed on the map.
It’s a little unfortunate that openstreetmap.org doesn’t care about the value of SAC scale when rendering paths.
Comment from Vincent de Phily on 26 October 2015 at 09:24
You can try breathing some life into https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/1500
Other than that, from a “how many people can use the path” point of vew, dangerous paths are arguably more mapworthy than private roads (especially in a place like Tenerife that attracts lots of mountain walkers). And yes, sometimes I see contributors (probably landowners) deleting private roads, when the proper thing to do is, like for dangerous paths, to improve the tagging (in that case access=private).
Of course you should contact the mapper, but I suggest also glancing through his/her other changesets in case the same mistake was made in other places.
Comment from joost schouppe on 28 October 2015 at 19:36
Completely correct to undelete, but I do recognize the dilemma. I see no simple solutions.
Comment from Roger Browne on 5 November 2015 at 16:04
Thanks everyone for your well-considered comments about restoring the deleted path.
Warin61, you suggested that I get in touch with the user who deleted the path. That is what I would normally do, but that user posts in German and I did not feel confident, so I will leave it this time.