Hey Joseph,
It looks like in this change you changed a lot of the giant natural=desert polygons around the Mojave to natural=sand. Can you say a little on why you think natural=sand is a good tag for these areas? I think that natural=desert certainly isn't well defined, but natural=sand doesn't seem like it's always right for these areas either to me. A lot of these "deserts" are covered in scrub or other plants. In fact, the Mojave Desert polygon you retagged overlaps with a tagged natural=scrub area: way/934058828), but you can certainly see it if you zoom in to e.g. the Lanfair Valley (way/165774302). I find that retagging these vast, often vegetated landscapes as sand weakens the tag meaning and obscures the actually sandy areas, like Kelso Dunes (way/61011696). IMO, some of these might best be tagged as some kind of place=*, or maybe natural=valley.
Best,
Will

Thanks!

Hi, it looks like you're using outdated imagery, as this area is currently under construction. In fact, you've re-added these highways directly on top of some demolished:highway=service ways: way/773910913. It might be useful to check for these sorts of things before adding new ways.
Best,
Will

Hi, this looks like an error, as this appears to be a building from satellite and streetside imagery

Hi, and welcome to OpenStreetMap! It looks like you've added names to the ramps in the 405/10 junction. Typically, freeway ramps aren't named for their destinations; instead, you can tag that with "destination:ref=I 10 West", for example. You can read more about it on the wiki: highway=motorway_junction#Destination_of_the_exit.
Happy mapping!
Will

Ha, all I saw is that the Murrieta label had disappeared from the map, which looks fixed now. These sorts of boundaries are certainly messy, so I don't think I see a specific improvement I'd make. Good work, and thanks for fixing!

Hello,
Please note that the description tag is not to be used for subjective/advertising copy: description=*#No_advertising. I will remove it shortly. Also, please note that opening_hours in OpenStreetMap follows strict syntax rules, as was corrected previously.

Hey stevea,
In this changeset, it looks like you changed the city label for Murrieta to "Mahogany Hills", instead of adding the existing Mahogany Hills suburb node (node/2990321549) to the relation. Was this an accident, or is there some other reason?
Best,
Will

Hello,
What in your view makes this not an alley? It looks like a normal alley to me.
Best,
Will

Hi, for what reason have you removed the service=alley tag from this way? It sure seems like a typical alley to me.

Typo! This change upgraded CA 74, not CA 79

Hi,
I think deleting this building was an error. I added it after walking by the location in question a few months ago. It's clearly a building, you can see it from Bing Streetside imagery. The service way leads directly up to the rooftop (hence the parking=rooftop tag on the parking lot).
Best,
Will

Hi, I noticed in this and some other changesets, you've deleted the "nubs" I draw connecting the curb cuts to the sidewalks. I draw those on purpose to make adding curbs easier in the future. For example, see a case like node/8403520508, this style of mapping makes it clear that the raised curb is to cross the street, but if you stay on the sidewalk you can avoid it. Is there a reason you delete them?
Best,
Will

Hi, it looks like you've been taking a hack at the Farmland Mapping import. I personally find this welcome, as these polygons are a bit of a mess and they make working in rural CA difficult IMO. Would you mind describing in a little more detail what you are modifying in these changesets? Is it just upgrading tags or geometry too? The changesets are so big that they're difficult to assess using most of the tools.
Thanks,
Will

Hi, thanks for adding this new direction separation. Sorry if I reverted it improperly last time.

Please note for future reference that Google Maps is not an allowed source for edits on OpenStreetMap, as it's incompatible with their license: osm.wiki/Google. Have you seen this yourself on the ground? If so, a note in your changeset comment as simple as "confirmed via survey, although it doesn't yet appear in the aerial imagery" is all the proof you need to keep someone else from changing it back :)
-Will

Hi,
While I appreciate the desire for this elevator to render with an elevator icon, removing correct tags to force a particular rendering seems like "tagging for the renderer". See osm.wiki/Tagging_for_the_renderer. It looks like these elevators should properly be both "highway=elevator" and "railway=subway_entrance", since they are both subway entrances and elevators. It's up to the software designers to properly render valid tagging.
Best,
Will

Hi, in the future, I would appreciate it if you used the changeset comment to describe the change you made to the data, rather than just "[location] changes". See osm.wiki/Good_changeset_comments.

Moreover, I'm a little confused by some of the changes you've made in this and other recent edits. What was your rationale for removing railway=subway_entrance from many nodes such as this one? They look like subway entrances to me.

Hi, in the future please use the changeset comment to describe the edit you made, rather than repeating your name. For example, a good descriptive changeset for this edit would've been "Added speed limits to Santa Monica Boulevard". See osm.wiki/Good_changeset_comments

Heh, my hunch would be that no one is keeping very close track regarding the reasoning behind the striping, but I'd love to be wrong. At least in LA, I think the city has a website with the traffic count database, but I found it pretty hard to use.

Yeah Venice has a very strange history. The canals were apparently pretty run down for a while, which is why they paved some over, but the remaining ones have since been spruced up and are quite nice areas now.

The general rationale you said on how you look at tertiary roads sounds about right to me. I might go in and change a couple of the road classes in the area, but these sorts of subjective classifications are always going to be in the eye of the beholder in the end. I tried to write up my opinions on road classification in a diary post a while back, in case you might find it useful (at least, to see what someone else's interior diatribe on it might look like): @willkmis/diary/399345

I think center lines are a useful gauge, but in my opinion not every road with a center line deserves to be highway=tertiary. Some roads get center lines because they have high traffic, but others get them just because they're particularly wide or curvy, despite not providing much connectivity. You can see the standards CA uses here to decide if you're interested, see section 3B.01: https://dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-media/programs/safety-programs/documents/ca-mutcd/rev6/camutcd2014-part3-rev6.pdf.

Some of the roads you've upgraded in Venice look like examples of the latter in my opinion. To me, Rialto, Market, Riviera, and Cabrillo all seem like residential roads: Abbot Kinney, Main, and Venice Way are more important through roads in the immediate area, whereas these roads don't really connect much and wouldn't be used except to get to the immediate abutting residences. They just all have center lines because they're particularly wide. There can be lots of weird reasons roads are wide despite getting little traffic; in this case I happen to know that it's because many of these roads are paved-over canals, and so the modern roads are the same width as those were: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice_Canal_Historic_District.