Areas - closed ways: meaning of `area=no` in 0.7.57

[mmd-osm]

In the past, area creation rules have excluded closed ways with an area=no tagging. This makes sense for objects like a raceway (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/118131873), where we don't want to describe an area when using a closed way.

Now on api_new_feat/ I still see the raceway as part of the result, which is somehow unexpected and feels a bit inconsistent to how areas used to work in the past.

is_in(-43.303335587207606,-65.27491450309753);
out geom;

By the way, the raceway would still show up as linestring in overpass turbo due to the area=no tagging:

[drolbr]

While it might feel inconsistent to the past way, it is in line with begin tag agnostic. You can of course restrict to only ways without that tag in a totally generic way:

is_in(-43.303335587207606,-65.27491450309753);
area._[area!=no];
out geom;

[mmd-osm]

As long as we don't have a dedicated area type in OSM (not Overpass), following a tag agnostic approach is probably not in line with how areas are defined in the wiki and might lead to some surprising results.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:area explicitly includes those tags to define what's an area and how to deal with uncertainties. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Area on the topic:

Note that areas are not distinct data primitives and some closed ways (for example landuse=*) are assumed to be areas, but others, such as highway=footway are not, being treated as linear features instead, except when there is also an area=yes tag.

In any case, I would propose to be clearly communicate this in the release notes / QL wiki page as incompatible change.