[talk-au] cities changed to towns

[John Henderson]

On 12/12/12 23:35, Nathan Van Der Meulen wrote:
> I completely disagree that population alone should be used to
> classify a location (unless the populations are seriously reduced).
> Going by the suggested populations, places like Tenterfield, Glen
> Innes, Charleville will become villages and Norseman, Laverton and
> Lockhart hamlets.
>
> The population method may well work in most of Europe as a 'village'
> of 2,000 people will rarely be further than 50km from a town and
> therefore won't need facilities beyond a basic fuel station and
> general store.Rural Australia is a different game.

Absolutely.  When I'm planning a trip, I like to look at OSM maps
online.  There's nothing more frustrating than seeing a few "towns"
(obvious from the network of streets), but not a town name to be seen.

Sure, I can zoom in to see the names, but when I do that, I've got to
zoom in so far that I can no longer see the spacial relationship between
those few towns (because I can see only one at a time).  This is the
result of tagging rural Australian towns purely on the basis of population.

The principle of not tagging for the renderer can be taken too far.  The
maps must be useful.

John