[Tagging] place or border_type ?

[Colin Smale]

On 2019-10-29 01:21, Paul Allen wrote:

> I have an innate dislike of such countrification on a global map.  It's better than 
> hijacking tags without adding a country code ("The rest of the world uses X=Y to mean 
> Z but in my country X=Y means W"), but only marginally so.  The problem comes when 
> we add X:de=* and then find it also applies to France, and Italy, so have to then either 
> add X:fr and X:it which are synonyms of X:de or persuade mappers in France and Italy 
> to use X:de.

I suspect that the similarities of meaning between countries are more by
coincidence than by design, unless they are defined by some
supranational body like the EU or UN. If X:de, X:it and X:fr appear to
mean the same thing, it doesn't mean there aren't subtleties which would
be lost for ever if the tagging was conflated. 

> From a very brief examination of what kreisfreie Städte are they seem to bear some 
> similarities to the UK's unitary authorities.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_authority 
> If the concepts are substantially the same, then we end up adding border_type:uk or 
> using border_type:de in the UK.

In the UK a combination of admin_level and designation is adequate. The
UK local government system is not always hierarchical, however. At the
parish level much is unparished, and concepts like "lands common" don't
fit a perfect hierarchy. There are also Combined Authorities. 

The UK system of local government means there is a wider-than-usual gap
between local authority areas and "places" (which I define to be the
answer given by a local to "where do you live"). The admin boundary
system and "place" demarcation (where that is possible) are completely
orthogonal. 

> I'd prefer a way of handling these that doesn't require country codes.

Country-specific concepts require country-specific tagging, and there is
nothing more country-specific than local government. The only way to
avoid country-specific tagging is to agree on a common definition for
the whole world. This is OSM... Good luck with that....
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