[Talk-ca] First nations boundary tagging

[stevea]

I'm no expert in Canadian (possibly indigenous peoples' political) issues, but it seems to me if these are truly unincorporated electoral areas within a regional district, they would still have a "place" where one could either visit or mail in, say, a voter registration.  In the USA, I'm nearly 100% certain that each and every county has such a place.  Additionally, there may be MANY such places in any given county, for example, in counties which subdivide into townships, where each township would logically have such a "centre."

I would find it unusual or odd for an unincorporated area (like there are many of in Snohomish County) to have such boundary=political (multi)polygons drawn in OSM, because while these might exist in reality, their entry into OSM seems in "earlier days" of entry / correctness.  But I would nod my head if I understood it to be correct, as it seems the people who live there could make a case for it being an accurate way to characterize the way that people register to vote.  Again, the distinction is between an admin_level boundary and a political boundary:  the former is a "real" government, the latter is "the people of this area, delineated by a boundary, vote on a consolidated ballot."  Sometimes, the two perform the same kinds of functions, adding to potential or actual confusion, but if "only for political / election purposes" is true, it seems prudent in the OSM sense to choose boundary=political over boundary=admin_level.

By "real" government, OSM means (approximately) "internationally recognized" in the case of countries / admin_level=2, "recognized as a sub-national unit" (by any given country) for admin_level=4 (or the somewhat-unusual case of admin_level=3), and so on down the line all the way to admin_level=10 (or 11 in some cases) where something we might call "a neighborhood council" (usually in larger cities, themselves often admin_level=8) is a "real" government that makes law / ordinances for people only in that admin_level=10 (multi)polygon boundary.

> On Mar 12, 2023, at 4:28 PM, Michael Stark <michael60634 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is tagging an admin centre appropriate for an unincorporated area? It's like tagging an admin centre for an unincorporated area of, for example, Snohomish County in the US. The electoral area is an unincorporated subunit of a regional district. And a regional district can be compared to a county in the US.
> 
> On Sun, Mar 12, 2023 at 6:09 PM stevea <steveaOSM at softworkers.com> wrote:
> On Mar 12, 2023, at 4:00 PM, Michael Stark <michael60634 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Those look like electoral areas within regional districts. Essentially the electoral areas, in this context, are unincorporated areas in the regional districts.
> 
> If so, they should be tagged boundary=political [1] with admin_centre and label nodes.
> 
> Thanks for everybody's diligence about such topics.  It is quite helpful when admin_level values (and boundary edges) emerge to a high level of accuracy — or at least as "highly accurate as we can manage to assign to them."  Sometimes this means a fair bit of understanding about "what local people say," but it usually includes a wider inclusion into what people (in Canada, in British Columbia, Alberta...) and Contributors (to OSM) consider "good practice" for assigning admin_level values.
> 
> [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:boundary%3Dpolitical