[Talk-ca] Boundary and updates

[Richard Weait]

On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Daniel Begin <jfd553 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
[ ... ]
>
> I'm uploading Canvec around Canada/US boundary and I try to get a clean
> result both side. The area I'm working on have the US-Canadian boundary
> defined by a small river.  The river has changed his course over the years
> and neither the Canvec boundary nor the OSM boundary fit with the river
> anymore.
[ ... ]
> What do we do with the boundary?  Keep the OSM untouched? Displace the
> boundary over the river? Any comments or suggestions

Bonjour, Daniel!

There have been similar discussion on talk@ and other osm lists.
There are competing issues in play.

Correctness:
Sometimes the boundary moves with the feature / river and other times
the boundary stays in the historic position.  I don't know what the
case is for this border.  IIRC, the Can/US border was referenced from
an International Boundary Commission source, so it is the
internationally recognized boundary, not a boundary that might be
claimed / disputed by arbitrary Hatfields / McCoys on either side of
the border.

I'd prefer to stick with an arbitrated source if possible.

Convenience:
If the border moves with the features, it sure would be more
convenient to have them share the same way.  If not, then not, because
we'll be discussing this again after the next heavy rain (and imagery
update) ;-)

The River:
(the land feature, not the Bruce Springsteen album)
Regarding the river, I prefer to see polygon rivers with a flow line
if the imagery supports mapping this way.  I prefer this for purely
aesthetic reasons and that probably makes me shallow.  It is not for
me to assign my mapping preferences on other mappers and so I fully
support your decision to map this river as polygons, or lines only.

Best regards,
Richard