[Tagging] Fuzzy areas again: should we have them or not?

Anders Torger anders at torger.se
Mon Dec 21 18:53:54 UTC 2020


Cluttering could be a problem, but is an easy thing to solve with 
filters. As I edit i national parks now I have this huge national park 
polygon covering all work, which renders as a flat although 
half-transparent color in JOSM. It's easy to remove with a filter 
though, but actually I'm not disturbed by it enough to care to do it. If 
we actually define this as a feature we could have a filter setup for 
these in our tools.

The question becomes more complex as there are several types of these 
areas. Regions in cities like this I haven't thought about before, I 
didn't know that it existed. It has quite different impact than a 
plateau in the mountains.

I think it would be unfortunate if a few bad examples of fuzzy area use 
or (simple) limitations in our tools block all use or further 
development of them, as they are important for certain type of maps in 
certain areas. I guess cities can do well without region mapping or just 
use points which there is a quite rich definition for already 
(neighboorhood etc), but making an outdoor/rural map without naming 
nature and without proper support for zooming out (ie having some 
approximate size of the named features), greatly cripples the 
capabilities of maps rendered for those areas.

Do you think there is a valid use for fuzzy areas in outdoor/rural 
areas, or would you rather see them not being used there either?

/Anders

On 2020-12-21 19:30, Mateusz Konieczny via Tagging wrote:

> Dec 21, 2020, 16:42 by zelonewolf at gmail.com:
> 
> On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 8:01 AM Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> 
> wrote:
> 
> Our current data model is not suitable for mapping fuzzy areas. We can
> only do "precise". Also, as you correctly pointed out, or basic tenet 
> of
> verifiability doesn't work well with fuzzy data.
> 
> The current data model works just fine for fuzzy areas: it requires a 
> polygon combined with tagging that indicates that the area is "fuzzy".  
> Since the current data model allows both polygons and tags, fuzzy areas 
> could be mapped just fine from a technical standpoint.

Bigger problem is that with things like mountain ranges there are 
multiple differing opinions
about borders.

For example in case of https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beskid_Wyspowy 
multiple authors
give precise, unfuzzy borders (specific rivers or roads).

But different authors prefer different borders.

See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borders_of_the_oceans
and 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundaries_between_the_continents_of_Earth
for other kind of differences. Modelling this is not fitting well how 
OSM works.

>> So the one questions is, do we want fuzzy areas, the other is, if we
>> want them, how can they be established - because in our current 
>> database
>> they cannot.
>> 
>> I think fuzzy areas make a lot of sense for cartography, but I 
>> strongly
>> object to people adding hand-wavy polygons to OSM for fuzzy areas.
> 
> "Whether we want fuzzy areas" and "how they can be established" is 
> certainly an open question that requires additional intellectual 
> thought and consensus-building to achieve.  However, the statement that 
> they "cannot" be established in our database is simply an opinion, not 
> a technical barrier.

I would not say cannot, but it is extremely poor fit to OSM data model 
and how
OSM operates.

> The statement that fuzzy polygons is "damaging" is an argument not 
> based in fact.  It is not damaging to me to have building outlines, 
> which I do not care about.  I can simply ignore them.  Likewise, fuzzy 
> areas cause no damage to people that do not care about fuzzy areas, 
> provided that there is tagging that distinguishes them from non-fuzzy 
> areas.

It is not so easy. Someone mapped several fuzzy areas in my regions and 
all of
them are extremely irritating while mapping.

Building outlines are not stretching for hundreds of kilometers and do
not appear in places where there is nothing at all and building outlines
are verifiable unlike mess like 
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1757627
and other from https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/11pc

Some day I will need to check whatever it is also one big copyright 
violation
(for now I just left questions at ancient changesets that added this 
mess).

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