MTB difficulty uphill

[torhovland]

General

Affected tag(s) to be modified/added: mtb:scale:uphill
Question asked: What is the difficulty level for mountain biking uphill here?

Checklist

Checklist for quest suggestions (see guidelines):

• 🚧 To be added tag is established and has a useful purpose
• 🤔 Any answer the user can give must have an equivalent tagging (Quest should not reappear to other users when solved by one)
• 🐿️ Easily answerable by any pedestrian from the outside but a survey is necessary
• 💤 Not an overwhelming percentage of quests have the same answer (No spam)
• 🕓 Applies to a reasonable number of map data (Worth the effort)

Rationale

Someone who is looking for MTB trails that are fun to ride yet not too challenging may be looking for mtb:scale set to 1 or 2. But when you go to such a trail, very often, perhaps even most of the time, whether or not you find what you are looking for depends on whether you are at the top or bottom of the trail, because the mtb:scale assumed you were going downhill. Including information about incline and difficulty when going uphill becomes very useful.

Here's an example where this is used properly: https://mtbmap.no/#16/63.4076/10.2203

See also

• Ask for MTB difficulty for paths #1850

Ideas for implementation

Element selection:

Ideally, all ways with an mtb:scale tag and an incline tag should be selected. In practise, this will be too limiting, because the incline tag will usually be missing.

We could select all ways with an mtb:scale tag, but it seems wrong to add, and even to ask about, uphill difficulty for flat ways.

There is already a quest implemented for adding the incline tag (#4385), but it depends on mtb:scale:uphill already being set. We should modify this so that it depends on mtb:scale instead, and allows an option for indicating the way is flat. But how do we deal with the equivalent tagging question in case the way is flat? As proposed here, we can set incline=0% in that case. That may seem spammy, but since we are only dealing with ways that have an MTB difficulty set, it is indeed useful to know whether or not the way is flat. If this is still too spammy, we could add a country filter as well.

With such a change made to the incline quest, the mtb:scale:uphill quest could be filtered on ways with an mtb:scale tag and an incline tag that is different from 0, 0%, no, and flat.

Metadata needed:

Proposed UI:

Should be very similar to the UI for mtb:scale, but adapted with the categorisation shown here.

[matkoniecz]

It makes sense to ask it at least on ways with incline indicating slope.

It may also make sense to ask for incline where it is missing, but I am not sure about that and it would be likely better as a separate quest, if a good idea.

[mnalis]

Ideally, all ways with an mtb:scale tag and an incline tag should be selected. In practise, this will be too limiting, because the incline tag will usually be missing.

That is indeed the crux of the problem. Enabling quest only on ways with incline already tagged seems without issues, so that is easy way to handle it when incline is present (but see below on issue of missing incline).

We could select all ways with an mtb:scale tag, but it seems wrong to add, and even to ask about, uphill difficulty for flat ways.

I would think that mtb:scale should be prerequisite for mtb:scale:uphill. Looking at the mtb:scale:uphill wiki, perhaps something like: highway=path and (mtb:scale > 3 or incline) would be reasonably good compromise?

It may also make sense to ask for incline where it is missing, but I am not sure about that and it would be likely better as a separate quest, if a good idea.

Yes, incline as a separate quest would be very useful, not only as a pre-requisite for this quest, but also in its own right (hikers, non-mtb bicycles, motocross, quads etc). But I cannot see how to easily make it as a quest, without it being to spammy -- obviously, one doesn't want to ask it on every highway=*; but even highway=path and (!lit or lit=no) and surface ~ "ground|earth|dirt|soil|grass|sand|mud|ice|salt|snow|rock|stone" are likely to be asked on too many ways, and asking it only on highway=* and mtb:scale > 3 on too little.

Making incline as overlay instead of a quest would solve that problem, but then it has all the problem of creating yet another overlay (and especially a quest which depends on overlay would not be very easy to use)...