[Talk-ca] Why does a search for Edmonton show the city out in the country?

[James Ewen]

If you look at the history, you'll see that way back in the dark ages
(Nov 2008), I tried creating a way that defined the city limits of
Edmonton. Actually I was creating a way that defined the boundary of
Strathcona County, and part of that way was coincident with the City
of Edmonton boundary. In the process I decided to create the outline
of Edmonton. I was also trying to figure out how to share nodes and
ways between two different entities. (Which to this day, I still don't
really understand.)

This is a remnant of that effort. I would create a way defining the
city limits in an attempt to get it to show up on the map. Someone
would come along and break it, I would try to fix it, someone would
break it, I would try to fix it, etc... I gave up trying to fix it, so
you get what you have now...

Here's another remnant of part of the boundary between Strathcona
County and Lamont County. I see it was just touched a few months ago
by someone deciding that the way needed to be named Strathcona County
when in fact it is not the county, but rather an administrative
boundary between two adjacent entities... but on the brighter side I
see Strathcona County is still intact!
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/relation/50382

There is a city limits boundary (called a county boundary) that looks
like it defines Edmonton properly.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/relation/2564500

If you look at the history for way 28295454 which you are talking
about, you'll see that some dingleberry back in 2008 put a name tag on
the way, which then takes you to the center of that way when pointing
at Edmonton.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/28295454/history

I just removed the name, type, and area tags from the way. That should
stop nominatim from falsely finding it. Yup, now you get a psuedo node
in the middle of the relation defining the outline of Edmonton, and a
physical node in the reflecting pool at the Legislature with a bunch
of tags on it.

I really would like to have all of the municipal boundaries on the map
of Alberta, but the data is locked up under copyright law. I thought I
found a free source of the data, but when I queried why I couldn't
access the data, I got a response that said "Oops, the note you saw
saying the data is freely available is wrong... so sorry, we'll fix
that!" Interestingly enough, that was a verbal response via telephone.
No automated email response, a real live person!

-- 
James
VE6SRV