[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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