<div dir="ltr"><br>On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 1:55 AM Doug Hembry <<a href="mailto:doughembry@hotmail.com">doughembry@hotmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><br>
Everyone seems to have forgotten boundary=administrative with its <br>
associated admin_level=n tag, which IMHO is pretty analogous to <br>
boundary=protected_area with its protect_class=n tag.</blockquote><div><br></div><div>I didn't forget it. I neglected to mention it because I didn't feel like opening both ends of a</div><div>can of worms and figured one end was enough. Now that you raise the issue, I don't like the</div><div>numbers in admin_level, but at least they are sort of hierarchical, whereas protect_class is not,</div><div>and there are very few of them.<br></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> They even both have look-up tables by country. And the class numbers are not arbitrary, <br>
Mateusz, - they map to IUCN categories.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>That wasn't clear to me from the documentation. I inferred that might be the case but I</div><div>didn't see an explicit mention. Then again, there is way too much documentation to wade</div><div>through before I saw a mention of IUCN at all. That ought to have been made clear in the</div><div>introduction, probably the first paragraph of the introduction, and maybe the first sentence</div><div>of that paragraph. But that still wouldn't redeem it.</div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
But seriously, how many aboriginal lands do you think a mapper would <br>
have to tag before they remember "protect_class=24"?<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>How many mappers handle nothing but aboriginal lands? Are there so many aboriginal lands</div><div>that even one mapper could deal with those and have time for nothing else? I'd guess that most</div><div>mappers try to deal with everything in a locality they're mapping. But protected areas are rare</div><div>and you're asking people to remember ALL of those magic numbers in case they come across</div><div>a nature reserve, or aboriginal land, or any of dozens of other things.<br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
And, as for the future archaeologists, and "human readable": Correct use <br>
of the boundary=protected_area tag actually requires the use of <br>
protect_title=* tag that provides users with the human readable title of <br>
this area-type (note: not the "name", which may also be present). ie, <br>
protect_title= Indigenous Protected Areas, or Indian Reservations, or <br>
Terra Indigena, or Territorio Indigena, etc,..</blockquote><div><br></div><div>The protect<font size="1">_<font size="2">title is duplicating information in the class. So you're asking a mapper to type in</font></font></div><div><font size="1"><font size="2">(and possibly get wrong) what should be a look-up mechanism. Either protect_title is unnecessary</font></font></div><div><font size="1"><font size="2">or protect_class is. Unless, of course, protect_class is so broad that protect_title is needed to</font></font></div><div><font size="1"><font size="2">flesh it out, in which case protect_class is useless.</font></font><br></div><div> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
But although I don't buy your "numbers are bad" argument [...]<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Numbers are bad. Not always, of course. building:levels is numeric. Most house numbers are</div><div>purely numeric (only most, because of things like 12A). But magic numbers, which IUCN are,</div><div>are bad in a human interface. They are a good way of reducing storage in a database (at the</div><div>expense of compute resources) so might be appropriate there, hidden from the eyes of all but</div><div>the database coders.<br></div><div><br></div><div>What you're asking for means that, to make the thing human-friendly, EVERY editor has to have a</div><div> look-up table so mappers can be presented with a list of comprehensible choices like "aboriginal</div><div>lands" which get mapped to protect_class=24. What you're asking for is that EVERY data consumer</div><div>has to have a look-up table so humans get to see that an area on the map is aboriginal land rather</div><div>than protect_class=24. Technically, it's possible; realistically it won't get implemented in all</div><div>applications.</div><div><br></div><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">The "numbers are bad" assertion worries me and prompts a broader question: if this is "policy",</blockquote><div><br></div><div>It is not (as far as I am aware) a policy. It is the feeling of a number of people here that magic</div><div>numbers are a bad idea. I suspect that many of those people base that feeling, as I do, upon</div><div>experience of programming and/or user interface design.<br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"> does it mean that boundary=protected_area, and protect_class=* tags are doomed in OSM? </blockquote><div><br></div><div>I wouldn't say they're doomed, but I doubt they'll get universal adoption as the primary way of</div><div>tagging such things, particularly if tags such as aboriginal_lands gain approval. This discussion</div><div>isn't the first time I came across protect_class etc. Some time ago I looked at how to map a</div><div>nature reserve and saw the choices were incomprehensible mess of protect_class and friends</div><div> or leisure=nature_reserve. Guess which one I chose.</div><div><br></div><div>I have no objection whatsoever if you wanted to introduce a tag like IUCN=*. In fact, I think it</div><div>would be a great idea. Mappers who care about it could use it. Queries with overpass-turbo</div><div>could use it. Nice idea. But protect_class and friends? Nah.</div><div><br></div><div>-- <br></div><div>Paul</div><div><br></div></div></div></div>