[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - admin_title=*

Colin Smale colin.smale at xs4all.nl
Thu Dec 18 13:37:58 UTC 2014


On 2014-12-18 14:42, Friedrich Volkmann wrote:

> On 17.12.2014 23:23, Colin Smale wrote:
> 
>> In the UK "designation=" is in wide usage for this. I don't know if it 
>> is typically a UK thing (it wouldn't surprise me) but local 
>> governments sometimes have the right to change their "style" - for 
>> example a "civil parish" can choose autonomously to call itself a 
>> "community council". It can also choose to call itself a "town 
>> council" although I suspect this needs cooperation from its parent 
>> authority. And a council can become a "city council" basically only 
>> through a central decision.
> 
> I think that the name of the council does not matter.

Exactly, that's my point. A simple civil parish and Salisbury City 
Council are administratively equivalent and are both tagged 
designation=civil_parish. This tagging should not, however tempting or 
logical some people might think it, be based on the name, but on the 
legal/constitutional status.

> 
>> Some "districts" (admin_level=8) have the status of "borough." All 
>> this doesn't change the legal powers and responsibilities of the 
>> council, it's all about what they are "called". There's a lot of 
>> snobism involved as well... I have tried to summarise a tagging scheme 
>> for UK local authorities here: 
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Csmale/ukboundaries [1]
> 
> So far we have destination=* for the UK, official_status=* for Russia, 
> and
> name:prefix for other countries. That diversity makes the tags 
> essentially
> unusable for applications. It's a pity that every national OSM 
> community
> make up their own tags, without caring what others do, as if there were
> berlin walls around each country.

Finding the right balance between universal, world-wide tagging and 
local conventions (at whatever level) is one of the biggest challenges 
we have. Usually any attempt at formalisation gets either shot down in 
flames by a vociferous minority or ignored by the silent majority.

> 
> Personally I don't care if the key is admin_title=*, designation=*, or
> official_status=*. We just should decide for one.

+1 from me, good luck with getting the consensus, and then getting the 
"loser" to retag everything...

Links:
------
[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Csmale/ukboundaries



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