I completely disagree with the don’t overdo it.

Go as detailed as possible in general let’s say a meter or so max level (dependant on the curvature) the example you gave as ‘too detailed’ I think is fine. Your ‘perfect one’ was IMHO terrible and needs at least double the amount of points.

Your reasoning for not adding more points is that someone may need to update in the future. My question is why? The road in question will likely stay that way for decades and a really well mapped curve will not need any changes made to it for all that time. What are they going to update? If the road changes significantly then the whole thing will need to be remapped anyway.

I say with time permitting map it as detailed as you can. The result will be there for a long time.

(I have other issues with that curve too it is to far aligned to one side it should be in the middle of the road and the connecting road should be more curved to reflect what the road….but I digress)

It is impossible to get one style to do everything.

I’ve had no skin in the game for any style for many years but overall I think the OSMCarto does a good job. Probably need to move from tiles to vector based before anything more useful comes along. There we can have thousands of styles easily and ones just for what you want. change the size of walking paths s they look as thick as motorways for veiwing long high level country walks you are can do that, etc

Regarding your style, I am struggling to see some of the differences.

Below we have an unpaved footpath joining onto a paved footpath.

https://map.atownsend.org.uk/maps/map/map.html#zoom=22&lat=52.9321016&lon=-1.5001884

Are these just too similiar to my eyes as I cannot see any difference?

simon,

I don’t do that. I wait for them to do a dozen or so edits over a few days and be active before contact. Not a 1 hit wonder editor. And they still stop. :)

And I am no fan of some of the old timers here who do come across as “I know best you must do it my way” for many things.

And although some (still very small numbers) longer term contributors have been put off by this and stopped mapping (I’ve been tempted before….) I think you misunderstand how very few people actually have anything to do with the community. Hardly anyone even looks at a dairy entry, mailing list, forum, etc. So I am not sure that interaction is putting newer people off.

I have a theory I share in the meetups I go to. That just even contacting someone just to say Hi , nice mapping, etc most of them then actually stop mapping. I have done this many times waiting for a dozens of edits and as soon as contact is made I guess they think “someone is looking at my edits. I don’t like that stalking. I going going to leave.” That is all a bit tongue in cheek but the majority over teh years that I have conatcted just stop and I suspect that is the case for most others if they are being honest.

People just aren’t all that interested in mapping in any great detail.

The vast majority never even make an edit at all of the 8.3 million registered members. Only 1.75 million have made an edit. And only a small percentage have made more than 1 or 2 edits.

I think read a few years ago now when we had about 1 million users with edit there were only 30,000 that had made 100 changesets.

Someone that does hundreds or thousands of changesets (I presume map changes as a metric but whatever) is rare indeed.