[Talk-GB] Wickham Market, Suffolk

[Mark Goodge]

On 07/09/2018 10:59, David Woolley wrote:
> On 07/09/18 10:47, Martin Wynne wrote:
>>
>> The great advantage of this definition for mapping is that it is an 
>> undisputed fact, on the ground.
> 
> You put lots of caveats into this, which leads lots of grounds for 
> disputes.
> 
> One thing to remember is that OSM is international and the 
> town/village/city concepts don't map cleanly to other cultures.  Even US 
> English has a rather different concept of city.

I think it has to be mapped according to local conventions. Using US 
terminology for British placenames, and vice versa, would result in 
labels that are counter to the expectation of most users. There isn't a 
global, one size fits all solution.

> What I've seen, in the context of other countries, is population being 
> favoured as the determiner.  Obviously you can get over-pedantic about 
> borderline cases.

I think population is the most useful fallback in the absence of more 
relevant local information. Fortunately, in England at least (Wales and 
Scotland are different!), we do have an accessible and usable source of 
legally definitive information for most cases.

> The thing that makes the UK difficult is that the tag values look like 
> the common language terms and match well enough to be right, a lot of 
> the time.

I don't see that as a problem. It makes it more likely that the right 
tag value will be chosen by someone who is simply mapping from personal 
knowledge rather than canonical sources. Which, most of the time, is 
fine. We only need to revert to an agreed definition in cases where the 
chosen value is incorrect.

Mark