[Tagging] Meaning of "administrative" in boundary=administrative, in your country?

[Kevin Kenny]

On Sun, May 31, 2020 at 5:34 PM Martin Machyna <machyna at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Just to add to this. I agree that there needs to be a cut off. I would suggest that as long as the area has clearly defined boundaries (in accessible official documents) and it was defined or is actively used by country's administrative officials or agencies then that would constitute for accepting it.
>
> Since these areas often don't fall into exact hierarchy they would not have `admin_level=*` tag, but would instead be distinguished by additional tags e.g. `boundary=administrative + administrative=police`.
> The advantage of this would be that all the areas used for administration would be in one place instead of arbitrary split into many individual tags. And would also preserve consistency, as some countries are already using statistical and cadastral regions under administrative tagging.

US counties (or the equivalent: Louisiana has parishes, and I don't
recall what Alaska's are called) are strictly hierarchical - they
don't cross state lines - and all fifty states have them. The federal
government asks for 'county' on a wide variety of forms, including
passport and security clearance applications. The block that a notary
public uses to witness signatures begins "State of ____, County of
____, SS: (City/Town/Village/Other) of ____:"

>> "_Administrative boundaries are intended for the general public's everyday use, not for specialists._"
>
> I don't think that OSM is only for general public and not for specialists. In fact, it is already used by specialist cartography companies and startups. And OSM could even be used by state administrations in the future as well. (Or whoever wants to work with government data visualization)

I don't map special-purpose administrative districts, of which New
York has a whole menagerie. I don't object if others do, but don't try
to fit them into the boundary=administrative hierarchy.  They don't
go. In New York, the admin_levels are as tabulated on the Wiki: 2=US
4=NY 5=New York City (don't ask!) 6=county 7=city, town, Indian
Reservation 8=village, hamlet (outside cities), ward, district,
precinct, community board (in cities). There are only a few ways in
which this scheme breaks hierarchy (New York City, one other city that
has annexed across a county line, a chartered city that has in
practice reverted to being a village, and about 15% of villages are in
two or more towns.). If things like school, library, police, fire,
water, sewer, or sanitation districts were to be included, the
hierarchy would be broken all over the place. And that only scratches
the surface of special-purpose administrative districts. As I said, go
ahead and map them, but don't try to make admin_level fit.


-- 
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin