[Tagging] Tagging and rendering places without a name

[Hidde Wieringa]

Hello,

This is the first time posting to this mailing list. In case this is the 
wrong place to post my question, feel free to point me to the correct 
mailing list/forum.

I opened an issue in the OSM carto Github repository 
(https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/4115) with 
the question if places tagged with place=* but without a name could be 
rendered. The follow-up pull request 
https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/pull/4120 proposes a 
rendering for unnamed places.

A discussion erupted, about the conceptual consequences of rendering a 
place without a name. This goes against the wiki 
(https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:place) where the tag name=* is 
marked as required. The first line in the wiki is /"Used to indicate 
that a particular location is known by a particular name, to indicate 
what sort of "place" it is. [...]"/. However indicating what sort of 
place it is, does not require a name. Indicating that a place of some 
sort exists at a certain location is also valuable data (a quick count 
of Nigeria gives ~9800 nodes of places without a name versus ~69000 
nodes of places with a name).

I wish to question the assumption that every place always has or 
requires a name. The comment of 'sommerluk' on the Github issue 
(https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/4115#issuecomment-612847759) 
indicates that there may indeed be small populated places without a 
name, although larger populated places always have a name in practice.

Also, regions of the world where on-the-ground mapping is not popular 
will mostly be mapped by remote mappers. Because of that, mapped places 
will usually not get a name (yet), because mappers are not locally 
familiar with the place. The data is still useful for humanitarian aid 
(for example see 
https://tasks.hotosm.org/contribute?difficulty=ALL&text=nigeria for the 
many projects in the HOT tasking manager for improving data in Nigeria, 
in particular missing residential areas). Rendering these places in a 
visual way makes using the data easier. Later, the unnamed places could 
still be given a name by a mapper with that knowledge.

The tough question is when some place is considered a 'place' and may be 
mapped when the name is unknown.

I am curious about further reactions on this topic.

Kind regards,
/Hidde Wieringa/

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/attachments/20200418/19290ed3/attachment.htm>