[Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

[Richard Z.]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 12:28:39PM +0100, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:
> 2014-10-27 12:16 GMT+01:00 Richard Z. <ricoz.osm at gmail.com>:
> 
> > > Besides, we really need to deal with object that have fuzzy borders
> > > already, e.g., some of the natural=wetland object come to my mind as an
> > > example. I quickly browsed through the related pages and discussions, for
> > > some strange reason the fuzzy border issue seems to not have been raised
> > > there at all? I suppose it's currently left solely to mappers
> > > discretion where to put the the edges.
> >
> > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Fuzzy
> >
> 
> 
> 
> I don't like this proposal. IMHO we do indeed need a way to map fuzzy
> stuff, but it shouldn't be done by drawing an "unfuzzy" way (or node or
> polygon) and then declare by tags that it is not to be taken literally,
> i.e. that there is no such way in reality but just a fuzzy border somewhere
> near that way. Rather we should tackle this on the datatype (or relation)
> level and invent some fuzzy objects that are already fuzzy in the way they
> are mapped (e.g. a group of nodes (or other objects) that define an area by
> saying "I'm inside" and maybe "I'm outside", so that dataconsumers could
> calculate an approximation for this area for their needs).

I don't endorse the fuzzy proposal but would like to note that many our
objects boundaries can be either razor sharp or extremely fuzzy so making
that a property of the object is not a good idea.
Consider the boundary of natural=forest, where it ends adjoning a road it 
is precise to one meter but where it borders natural=scrub the boundary may 
be fuzzy to several hundred meters.

Richard