[Talk-ca] Fixing Albertan Places

Richard Weait richard at weait.com
Tue Sep 23 16:26:25 BST 2008


On Tue, 2008-09-23 at 11:08 -0400, simon at mungewell.org wrote:
> Hi James,
> Yes, the specialized municipalities cause some problems.... I checked in
> the source listing and it should be (which won't produce a match, and
> therefore no change to existing nodes):
>   Sherwood Park (Urban Service Area) = Hamlet
>   Fort McMurray (Urban Service Area) = Hamlet

Every map is an abstraction of the truth on the ground.  For one thing
we jam the whole world onto a small-ish piece of paper.  So we know that
not everything can be perfect.  OSM has approximated places by
population through hamlet, village, town, etc.  partly because
population is often found on the sign at the edge of town.  

Will we gain much by changing place to the official designation if it
causes a rendering failure?  I think it unlikely that every official
designation world-wide will get renderer support.  Perhaps we can add
official_designation = "Urban Service Area" , and leave place = an
expected value.  

If The Fort, for example, deserves to be more or less prominent than the
true population would suggest, then change it to the "proper" place
value in your judgement.  Then leave a note= so others don't mistakenly
change it back.  

In summary, adding the official municipal designation may help some
users.  The average user may be better supported by a good render.  This
is a bit of "mapping for the renderer" but it is more "there has to be
some abstraction or else we map at 1:1".  

Best regards,
Richard





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