[OSM-talk-be] boundary names and my program

[Jan-willem De Bleser]

On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 1:41 PM, A.Pirard.Papou
<A.Pirard.Papou at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> When I started to map Belgian boundaries, I looked for instructions on the Belgian pages and I found none.  So, I looked at what was being done, I saw that names were used on boundaries and I did the same.  And now I am accused of insisting to put names on the borders when I found them that way.
>

I haven't been accusing you of anything. I'm insisting that if we're
going to make an effort to fix the borders, we should do it properly.
I consider the old names to be wrong, but don't like the ones you want
to use either, and you have yet to convinced me otherwise.

>
> If I look at the result of the way it is done, I see nameA — nameB  name1 name2 name3 name4 ... everywhere, sometimes being a municipality, sometimes being an arrondissement, sometimes being a province etc... without any clue for the map reader to know which is which.  And Namur or Liège can be three different types.
> The result of my view of the Boundaries is that, instead of seeing this on the border
> Liège — Namur  Havelange  Huy  Namur Dinant  Clavier Liège
> one would see
> Clavier — Havelange    Huy — Dinant (arr.)    Liège —Namur (prov.)
> beside the unavoidable pile of shit.
> To  this, I'm answered that the pile of shit is very well the way it is. That the nec plus ultra is a renderer taking the name (but not the admin_level!) off the municipality relation without the faintest notion of what are the names to be used for distinguishing admin levels.  And one will certainly not miss the occasion to roll out the refrain that I want to tag for the rendering.
>

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're trying to say. I have said
consistently that their shouldn't be a name tag on these border
segments, not that they are fine as they are (because I agree that
they're no good as they are). I also haven't accused you of mapping
for the renderer, but rather for the mapper. And if you read the rules
for boundary=admin on the wiki that I was referring to in my previous
email, they also refer to putting the admin_level tag on the relation
as well, rather than on the boundary way segment. If you do that with
the multistring method you might have to query a tree of a few
relations rather than just one, but it should still be clear what
belongs where.

>
> > Basically everything is "free-form" in OSM. There are conventions on tagging, but there is no guarantee people will stick to them.
>
> My own opinion is indeed that it's difficult and unreliable to obtain data from OSM.
> But, after reading for boundaries that one does it that way and the other another way and even in Belgium that they are nor doing it the way they say they must do it,  I have serious doubts about existing conventions too, conventions allowing to scan the tree here and not there.
>

I follow the wiki. If there's someone who doesn't, I try to contact
them. If the wiki needs adjustment, it gets discussed. There will
always be mistakes (I make them as well) as well as unclear rules, but
we can only try to improve them.

>
> The net result of this is that I'm losing my time writing messages in hope of doing something right, that I hate doing things wrong and that, in consequence I'm leaving the boundary business.
>

Sorry, but you asked for everyone's opinion on your proposal. I gave
my opinion, and suggested an alternative. Feel free to accept it,
debate it or disregard it because there are no OSM police. I'm not
going to sit there reverting your edits because I don't agree with
them, but I'm also not going to agree with you just because otherwise
you'll stop contributing. You don't get my support without convincing
me that you're right, and although "Arrondissement A - Arrondissement
B" might be a better name than "Country A - Country B", I still don't
think it's a better name than none at all.

By the way, I hope you don't think I'm angry at you, which is a
well-known danger of email discussions. I do wish we didn't have to
have this same discussion again, as the last time it did get heated,
but don't take what I'm writing as a personal attack. Do that and
you'll get defensive, and then I'll get defensive, and then nothing
will be decided.

- Jw