Requirements for a good cycle route description

From OpenCycleRoute

delsitracda This is a starter for ten as to what information we're looking to capture about cycle routes.

However note it is not necessary to have all of this information in order to contribute a cycle route. Others will be able to ride it later and fill in the blanks. Please contribute whatever information you have.

Contents 1 Kinds of cycle routes 2 Things we always need 3 Things we don't need 4 Minimum needed 5 Ideally

Kinds of cycle routes

Any kind of cycle route may be uploaded. It might be a nifty commuter route through town or a little known way to get from A to B, an offroad trail, an easy or hard day ride, a hill climb, a multi-day moving-on tour, a set of routes around a fixed centre. If you find it useful or enjoyable, chances are someone else will.

Things we always need

• You must be willing to license your contribution under the Creative Commons Attributions-Sharealike License or a more liberal license. If you require attribution, give us a name or a nickname to attribute the route to.
• You must be able to license it as above - that means it must be all your work, and not based on any other copyrighted work, unless that work is also licensed under a compatible creative commons license.

Things we don't need

• Please don't contribute maps, unless you have drawn them yourself without the aid of any copyrighted map, or unless based on OSM data from The OpenStreetMap project. We don't require maps since as soon as someone has ridden the route with a GPS, and provided us with a GPX file, we will be able to overlay the route on existing maps such as Google Maps and OpenStreetMap.

Minimum needed

• A summary description of the route, where it is, what kind of route it is, who it's suitable for, what's good about it etc
• Turn by turn (waypoint) description of the route itself, preferably in English although if you can provide additional languages too that is great. This can simply be a written explanation of the route. If you include streetnames, these should have been obtained from riding the route and taking notes, not from looking them up on a copyrighted map.

Ideally

• A summary photograph that gives the flavour of the route
• A GPX file listing, and ideally describing, all waypoints (turns/junctions on the route) and points of interest (POIs)
• Ideally the GPX file will also include the elevation data. We will be able to automatically generate an image showing uphill and downhill segments of the route if you include this.
• Photographs taken at each waypoint
• Photographs taken at each point of interest
• Links to waypoint and POI photos are preferred, to save on hosted storage space. For example you could host the images on flickr. If you do, please be sure to put them under a Creative Commons license. It's also helpful, but not essential, if you geotag the images - this will make matching the pictures up with waypoints and POI easier for us. If you don't do this then give us some other way of knowing which photo corresponds to which waypoint or POI (for example just write it in the Wiki page describing the route).
• Translations of the descriptions and text into other languages than English
• Other routes nearby (this is not strictly needed, as we should be able to calculate this from the GPX file - however it will provide good test data when developing this capability)