#OSM has its own #eternalseptember - it's called highway classification. The most recent reinventions: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/official-classification-of-highways/137263 / https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/rfc-feature-proposal-motorway-classifications/137119 and a plea to not discuss this ever again https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/lets-not-talk-about-highway-classification-in-osm/137150 which, unsurprisingly, also turns into a discussion about highway classification.
Official classification of highways

Hello, in order to allow for a more consistent usage of highway=*, I’d like to propose global tagging of the official, national highway classification. In some countries, highway=* already corresponds to the official classification, but that’s not the case everywhere. Now, ref=* usually already shows what the road is classified as but sometimes roads can have no ref and in that case, noref=* doesn’t give any information. Sometimes, at junctions, roads can have small sections of no ref but sti...

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@mvexel thank you for this, the discussions are excellent mind-bleach in these trying times.

(I hate you for helping me waste hours of time I could be doing smth useful with)

@geospaz you’re very welcome 😁
@geospaz I’m sure you have opinions you could share? There’s always someone Wrong On The Internet™️

@mvexel
Def.
No time to do the reg dance and contri to the threads so:

 Change all tags to have a layer of indirection : tag=12345678 and a central lookuptable - global changes are a snap.

 Change imple lang if at least 1 central tool to one that handles data more nicely. I am forced to do clojure and wish it on everybody.

 Postgré is nice if you're still in the 90's but for something webscale I hear mongodb is the real MMO option. Also full jsonified tags.