Forum:Announcements/Rules of the sea - shipping lines

Forums → Official announcements → Announcements/Rules of the sea - shipping lines

OpenGeofiction:Rules of the sea has been updated to remove shipping lines. These shipping lines should no longer be mapped. Instead the route=ferry tag should be used as documented in the OpenStreetMap guidelines:

"This tag is used on ways way, which maps a ferry or water bus route on the sea, rivers, or other waterways. Ferries are a form of public transport that operate to connect road networks and to provide passenger service much like bus service. Some ferry systems consist of many routes, while others only provide a convenient means to visit an island or cross a river or lake. route=ferry can be used for large ferries carrying passengers, bicycles, cars, trucks and even rail cars, as well as for small boats ferrying people over rivers and lakes or self-operated ferries"

/wangi (talk) 13:18, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

I only just noticed the changes to the rules of the sea. I noticed it after seeing that all the ferry connections to Eelanti have been deleted from the map.

What do these changes actually mean? If I understand the rules correctly, the removed ferry routes would have been fine if they were tagged differently (assuming they used the different/old way of tagging which I do not remember for certain). The OSM guidelines definitely include the kind of ferry connections that have been deleted to the route=ferry tag. (Note that the OSM guidelines page specifically uses an image of a big international car ferry (or even cruise ferry) as an example, very similar to the deleted routes. In fact, I have travelled on that specific ferry, so I do know what I’m talking about. The crossing took around 16-17 hours from Helsinki to Stockholm.)

So am I allowed to recreate the routes with that route=ferry tag (like they would be mapped in OSM)? Or is there some reason why that is not okay? And why were the ferry routes deleted from the map completely if different tagging would have fixed the problem?

It might be good to also make the rules a bit more clear, as I’m probably not the only one who is not sure what they mean. (What ferry´routes are/aren't allowed or if it's just a change with tagging.)

--Eevee (talk) 00:34, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

In the past, some mappers used ferry lines to denote freight shipping lines, which isn’t the intended use of those lines. If you have a passenger service that runs at least daily I think that’d be permitted to tag; anything less than that, my opinion is that it wouldn’t be a reliable enough service to warrant including on the map. -TheMayor (talk) 01:08, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Worth noting that there are plenty of ferries that only run once or twice a week, or are even more variable than that but are still very important to have on the map - for instance, this ferry route only runs on Tuesdays and Fridays, and this one runs once a week only as well. These ferries are still fine to have on the map in my opinion, especially as they often represent key transport routes for the people who live in these remote communities. --Lithium-Ion (talk) 13:01, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Very interesting to clarify this statement. I was thinking the use of the tag "route=ferry" was being banned in OGF, except to national routes. Now, basically, I understand that it was only about cargo shipping. Anyway, no worry, I will not map touristic cruising lines to Maka'he, hehehe -- BMSOUZA (talk) 12:51, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Could someone clarify if the above comments are how the rules are officially supposed to be understood? After all, my ferry lines were deleted after this announcement by someone, probably wangi (the changesets were too large to find if they were the ones that included deleting routes created by me but I assume they were the ones). --Eevee (talk) 19:41, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

If you're mapping a true ferry route, then go ahead. The map was awash with shipping lines and implausible "ferry" lines, so it's no surprise I made some mistakes in the process. /wangi (talk) 20:05, 16 May 2022 (UTC)