[OSM-newbies] Estuaries and large bays

[Andrew Harvey]

On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 11:55 PM, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:
> At some point, here on the Newbies list, we have to decide when a
> topic moves from the realm of "a good answer for the newbies list" to
> "a good topic for discussion on talk@ or tagging@".

That is why I sent my last message to talk@ too.

On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 5:49 AM, swanilli <swanilli at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 24 October 2010 09:11, Andrew Harvey <andrew.harvey4 at gmail.com> wrote:
> But tagging as natural=bay is valid for both points and polygons. My
> observation (earlier) is that there are many more named bays in the database
> as named points than as polygons.

I suspect that is because its easier to just add a node. Just like
many other features like schools may start off as single nodes, if you
can trace the boundary, at least in Sydney I thought it was accepted
practice to map it as a closed way around the boundary.

I cannot speak for others, but I know that for the bays I added as
nodes I put them there initially because it wasn't too hard or
controversial. But I had the hope that later I or someone else would
convert them to closed ways.

> On the issue of a bay being a body of water and not a point, at least one
> official govenemnt source has no problem in treating a bay as a point e.g.
> <http://www.ga.gov.au/bin/gazm01?placename=botany+bay&placetype=0&state=0>

>From what I could tell that dataset lists everything as a single point.

Also that datasource is not CC-BY-SA compatible as far as I can tell,
so I'm trying not to use it too much.

>> mapped as way allows renderers to for instance render names for
>> large bays at low zooms, and not render names for small bays untill
>> very high zooms.
>
> Tagging a polygon as natural=water and name=Givenname produces the same
> result.
>> * mapped as a way allows for someone to use the database to ask "Am I
>> in ... Bay?"
> Again, tagging a polygon as natural=water and name=Givenname produces the
> same result.

For that purpose of helping the renderers and is in queries, yes, but
it changes the meaning of the data. Someone reading the database will
think that Botany Bay is not the same kind of feature as all the other
bays marked as natural=bay, when actually they are both "Bays".