[Talk-ca] New mapper in Manitoba - an introduction

[stevea]

Welcome, Mary.  I'm California-based (and have joined other English-based talk-lists, like here and talk-au) and enjoy reading "the digest" as well.  My French, Spanish, Polish and Hungarian are not as strong as my native English, but I have discovered OSM is an opportunity to knock the dust off of those language skills of mine, too.  People here are supportive and delightfully collaborative.

Excellent of you to "learn the community norms," that sounds like you are a "listening" member of other communities as well, putting you in good stead for any community!

At least in the USA (though to some degree, there are these fuzzy ambiguities and sometimes-difficult semantic edges all over the world), what is a "protected_area" has been pulled and tugged at quite a bit in various directions, with some tagging smears over the years.  These have gotten better (slowly), and there is an emergence (at least in the USA) that what governments (state and federal, perhaps provincial-level and federal-level in Canada is something you might explore) call "protected areas" is becoming much more harmonious with how OSM tags these.  For example, there are distinct methods of tagging all of "national parks," more "local" parks (like a small one in an urban area), natural reserves, protected maritime / marine areas, distinctions between the "use" of the land (and whether it is actually "protected" or not — perhaps it is sustainably-harvested forest, for example) and the "cover" ON the land...there are a lot of issues going on all at the same time.  And while we (OSM as a global project) might not (yet) have gotten full agreement on everything, a lot of progress has happened over the years.

Keep learning (reading wiki can be especially helpful), keep watching the map (data), know that asking questions is encouraged.  And if you haven't yet joined our Discourse community forum [1], please feel welcome there, too.

Steve
Santa Cruz, California
OSM Volunteer Contributor since 2009

[1] https://community.openstreetmap.org/