[Tagging] [Talk-us] how to tag US townships?

[Alex Mauer]

On 10/21/2010 06:18 PM, Ant The Limey wrote:
> Couple of thoughts
>
> B) i don't feel that any particular tag should necessarily have a
> global level of consistency. As a geographer, i instinctively grasp
> that location itself is context added to any fact - as one of the
> five fundamental questions of real it (what, where, when, why, how).
> So why must something that is context define itself as global?

IMO: It should be possible to make a map that looks the same for the 
entire world.

I don’t really want to have to know that by convention the UK colors its 
motorways blue, while the US tends to go for pink.  I’d rather have a 
globally-consistent map so I can look at the UK on it and think “OK, 
those things that look like freeways on the map in my area must be the 
equivalents of freeways over there“.

They may use different shields and numbering systems, but at least it’ll 
look the same.

I don’t want to have to memorize the mapping conventions of every 
country to know what I’m looking at when I look at a map, or to shift my 
mode of thinking as I move around the map.  OSM is a map of the world, 
so that’s the “locational context” in which we (OK, I) am looking.

—Alex Mauer “hawke”