[Tagging] consensus needed: officially a town but visibly distinct settlements?

[Michael Tsang]

Dear all,

I visited the whole Curonian Spit last month (the whole 100 km from 
Zelenogradsk to Smiltynė) and made some edits on it according to observations 
from my eye. These edits got reverted on the basis that I have "no local 
knowledge" (I made the edits completely on observations - "If it looks like a 
duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.")

Basically there were 2 sets of edit which got reverted, I am going to focus on 
the issue of settlement tagging here (another set is road tagging):

1. I have marked the settlements from Nida to Alksnynė, from suburb to town/
village/hamlet, because they are clearly distinct settlements from eyes, 
separated by the forest, and relabelled Neringa to be a municipality.

One more reason of that is we are expecting the name "Nida" shown as the town 
because we, as a tourist, is expecting to visit Nida (that town is generally 
known as Nida rather than Neringa)

The changesets are 61735279 and 61735890. If we look at the history of Nida 
and Alksnynė, they were mapped as town and hamlet respectively initially, but 
got changed to suburb about 3 years ago.

Smiltynė can be reasonably considered part of Klaipėda (only a short ferry 
ride) so it is a suburb out of question.

According to the wiki, "OSM's usage of 'suburb' is different than that used by 
North American English, where a suburb is "an area, often residential, outside 
of a central city". Often these suburbs are distinct settlements and will be 
tagged as place=village, place=town, or place=city, depending on factors such 
as population." What I see those settlements seems to be the North American 
definition because they are distinct residential areas outside the central 
town Nida.

These got reverted in 61762622, saying (translated) "Bookmark management 
(canceled guessing without local knowledge)" and a comment is left on my 
changeset 61735279 "Reverted incorrect change with no local knowledge.", and 
"Whole Curonian Spit is officialy one town. Therefore no hamlets inside."

Well, the southern settlements, Morskoye, Rybachy and Lesnoy, have been marked 
since the beginning villages and hamlets with no change afterwards, but they 
are officially belongs to the same "Curonian Spit rural settlement", similar 
to Nida to Alksnynė which officially belongs to "Neringa municipality" with 
its capital in Nida.

So I doubt if it is reasonable to mark those settlements "which belongs to a 
city municipality (although there is no true city there) but distinct 
(seperated by forest) from a naked eye" as "suburb", rather than town/village/
hamlet/etc, and need community consensus on this.

Michael
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