Lee Carré (2022-02-04 09:58:26+00:00): “Thank you for a very respectful answer.”

Likewise; I forgot to mention, in my previous reply, that I'm thankful for your being receptive. Sadly, many aren't.

“I have never been to Jersey myself, but I have many connections there. One of my connections lives in the area I modified, and my tagging is based on what he have told me.”

That's vastly better than most non-local mappers, who often guess & assume, or otherwise treat Jersey as part of the UK (which it isn't).

“It was very difficult to align the imagery, and my additions are not based on the same alignment (yikes).”

I can imagine. It's a mess. Nothing's aligned (with anything else).

Until more GNSS traces are published, the least-bad option is probably to align with existing data, as you say. Then, in future, someone brave can mass-realign whole areas without having to do too much checking of source:* values.

Unfortunately, the early mappers don't have the (relevant) technical background to appreciate the problems or considerations. Hence silliness like tagging for a particular renderer (for example, quite a few nodes have addr:housename merely to make that (descriptive) text appear in the tiles, instead of being properly tagged (and (gasp) using description=* for descriptions), recognising that rendering is secondary to data-integrity, and that the database itself is the map, not any particular rendering; but, alas; been fixing plenty of that, too, as I find & survey it).

Compare Guernsey (to the north-west); they've at least done things more in the right order, and have plenty of traces everywhere.

“Houses are added straight from the Bing alignment as I couldn't find better alignment, and I don't trust the current roads to be aligned.”

Many roads aren't well-aligned. Often things are offset by several metres. Bing isn't terrible, but not is it close. It's better than it used to be (I recall reading about 100-metre offsets(!)).

At present, other than collecting more traces, there's no good option. So, best-effort, and tagging additions clearly for the benefit of whoever tries to organise it properly.

But, at least misalignment is a known problem. I've had arguments with over-zealots folks who ranked an outdated almanac higher than my very-recent survey. Frustrating. Particularly when such folks value uniformity (of tagging) over accuracy. Sigh.

“When adding roads or messing with their geometry I first aligned the imagery with the existing roads. This is to move existing roads as little as possible, and still have the added geometry make sense.”

Yup, probably the best than can be done, at present. Likely what I'd do. Often what I actually do (because, e.g., placing a small feature according to GNSS would make it appear somewhere obviously bad, like the middle of a road, or the other side of a wall).

A lot of these sorts of problems are only apparent due to having GNSS for real-time comparison.

Makes for headaches, at times. Imagine trying to survey a row of houses (for addr:housen*, building:* & roof:*) when the alignment to GNSS is off by 5+ metres, and so when standing in front of one house, the map shows me as between two houses (or when between two, showing me as in front of one). Trying to keep track of which is which, while also looking for the values for tags, is a pain. Sometimes I've given up (and occasionally left a frustrated note).

I do wonder, sometimes, if misalignment is why Jersey gets little attention from foreign armchair mappers; maybe they simply give up.

Hence my suggestions about using source:geometry. If I know which imagery was used, then that makes surveying a little easier, when there's significant misalignment.

“I'm hoping to send someone out with a GPS later this week, and see if I can get enough traces to actually align the imagery correctly.”

Ah, that would be good. I should upload the several dozen I've captured since my last upload.

Would you have them tag their uploads so that they're easy to find (amid the noise of all the others, especially New Jersey). For example, with ‘Jersey’. See the traces under my profile, for examples.

“I agree that access=destination is probably better.”

👍

I use OsmAnd for navigation, and it will avoid (by default) ways marked as private, but allow those with most other values for access. Amusing, sometimes, when it tries to send me down a way which is clearly private, but hasn't been tagged as such (nor with the gates at each end) 😄.

I notice quite a few reports about dubious routing on OsmAnd's Github repo ultimately come down to OSM data being incorrect.

So, it makes a difference.
Navigation apps typically only do monthly updates of the map, so mistagging can take a while to be corrected.

“I think lit=yes can be mapped based on Mapillary if there are street lights. But maybe there could be cases where the street lights are no longer in use. I'd be happy to stay away from tagging that.”

You'd think so, but I recall the lengthy debates on StreetComplete's GH repo issues, about that assumption. It's not as straight forward as one would think.
I've encountered ways which did have lamps, but not enough to illuminate the whole way (so that their light fields overlap slightly). What's the correct value then? Unclear. Some, I've seen, have very dim lighting, or not all the lamps actually function.

If you do add lit=*, then also add something like fixme:lit=#SurveyMe and/or note:lit=* and/or source:lit=[non-survey], for those ways to be easy to find via Overpass (Turbo) to actually do a night-survey on.

Part of why I'm a stickler for quality (aside from for its own sake, principles, pride in one's work), is that I'm intending to make OSM (for Jersey) the best map (in practical terms; completeness & accuracy) as a way of drawing more users to it, and away from proprietary maps. While I know to value freedom, most others don't, and only value practical advantage. Unfortunately, almost no-one in this backward island has even heard of OSM (which sometimes leads to interesting conversations when muggles ask me what I'm doing while surveying).
To ultimately be able to say, to most any query; it's on OSM.

Even official sources for the likes of emergency=defibrillator, or amenity=charging_station are horribly inaccurate. To correct those would be a bureaucratic nightmare. But, ensuring that OSM is of high quality is quite realistic 🙂.

To then use that fact, in future, to badger / persuade officials & bureaucrats to coöperate, release data, and other goodness. I've quite a few ‘big fish’ items on my wish-list (including much better imagery, and getting the establishment to help with keeping OSM updated).

“I'm sure I missed commenting on a lot of things, but I have someone impatiently waiting for me to finish this comment so we can go.”

Understandable. Whenever you (do) have the time.

“Anyway, thanks for some really good feedback.”

It's been an interesting (& productive) conversation 🙂.