[Talk-GB] 'historic' county boundaries added to the database

Thu Sep 20 12:05:42 UTC 2018

I think Richard as usually eloquently summarised my position. Rutland is
perhaps an extreme example insofar as more-or-less the entire population
objected to the county disappearing. However such cases are not uncommon
across the world: of the top of my head, I can think of the city of
Allegheny being subsumed by Pittsburgh in the early 1900s, and a more
successful municipality which avoided being incorporated into Madison,
Wisconsin in the late 1900s. My twitter feed is full of tweets from OSM
contributor Christian Rogel about the campaign for the French region of
Brittany to be extended to incorporate it's historical capital, Nantes.

A sense of identify associated with place is neither romantic, nor
something which can be determined by administrative diktat. Although
administrative boundaries can have unexpected consequences: in the modern
day, some youth gangs use post code districts as boundaries. Whereas I
would expect many people to be able to identify the historical/traditional
county in which they live, I'd very surprised if they even know a
ceremonial county exists at all (unless they were angling for a Deputy Lord
Lieutenantship). Furthermore, whereas there is abundant evidence to help
identify the rough boundaries of the former, I suspect there is not one
iota of on the ground evidence for the latter.

As others have said there are numerous non-governmental bodies whose work
is largely constrained by the traditional county boundaries. Sporting
groups such as the teams in the Surrey Cross-country League (some such as
Herne Hill Harriers within the 1889 county of London) allow a reasonable
reconstruction of the original county boundaries. County level associations
exist for many sports and maintain, for the most part, these traditional
boundaries. Similar things happen with groups such as local history
societies (the Thoroton Society
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoroton_Society_of_Nottinghamshire> for
Nottinghamshire). I happen to sit on the committee of the Derbyshire &
Nottinghamshire Entomological Society, which, guess what, is devoted to the
study of insects in these two traditional counties. The reason for this
adherence to the old counties is that many of the organisations came into
existence in the decades around 1900. Furthermore, bitter experience shows
that trying to shadow the administrative structure is a recipe for
continual change and lack of continuity (look at the original planned
titles of the Buildings of Scotland & Wales: all based on admin units which
have largely ceased to exist, and will have no meaning to people in 20
years time).

At this point I should be clear I am not advocating whether these
boundaries should be in OSM or not. I am advocating that it is not the role
of OSM to be a mere slave of administrative whims which don't reflect the
lived experience of ordinary people Surely this is the essence of what OSM
should be about: the opportunity to represent more than just the 'official'
view of the world. In 1950 such a viewpoint would have meant reverting
anyone who added "name:cy" tags.

Lastly on consensus. We clearly don't have it on this issue, nor
necessarily on what truly meets an on-the-ground rule for boundaries.
Instead of arguing about the points we don't agree about, consensus is
better built by adumbrating the things which we believe in common, and
agreeing on which specific points there are differences. As we all should
know by now voting may not solve anything.

Jerry

On Thu, 20 Sep 2018 at 07:25, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> Richard,
>
> On 20.09.2018 00:01, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> > From 1974 to 1997, the county of Rutland didn't exist.
>
> It's nice to see such a passionate plea for one particular historic
> boundary, and pleas like that are what can give rise to the exceptions I
> was talking about.
>
> These exceptions do not, however, mean that it's a free-for-all for all
> kinds of historic boundaries. I don't know about Rutland - the way you
> say it sounds as if it is, and has always been, crystal clear what is
> part of Rutland and what is not. But one participant in this thread has
> stated that their particular county boundary has changed many times over
> the years. I don't know if the people inhabiting the areas that have
> changed hands each time kept a stubborn affection for "their *real*
> county" just as you describe the people of Rutland to have done. For the
> sake of the argument, let's assume there had been a couple of minor
> changes to the boundary of "Rutland County Council District Council"
> since 1997. Surely your argument which seems to be based on the romantic
> "Rutland that people feel in their hearts" could not be applied as a
> reason to store "Rutland County Council District Council in the borders
> of 1997", plus "Rutland County Council District Council in the borders
> of 1999", and also "Rutland County Council District Council in the
> borders of 2003"...?
>
> A line needs to be drawn, because otherwise there *will* be people
> mapping these things ("for historic interest"), and they won't stop at
> historic administrative boundaries; they will include electoral wards of
> all EU elections back to god knows when, parish boundaries from 1905,
> and school districts for good measure. And each time it will become more
> different to maintain the data. How is someone who moves a river to be
> more in line with current aerial imagery supposed to know which of the
> 23 boundaries using that river should be affected and which not?
>
> All the reasons you have listed were based on popular use. You said
> things like "pretty much everyone put their address as ...", "no-one
> thinks they live in ..." etc.; at the same time such things are often
> not very precise and don't easily lend themselves to drawing boundaries.
> The "West Hampstead" you mention is mapped as a point - perhaps
> precisely because it has no documented administrative boundary to go
> with it but is a "property speculator's construct" as you say?
>
> I think that if case-by-case exceptions are made from our "verifiable on
> the ground" rule, then at the very least the object in question must be
> important enough (an admin boundary that 30.000 people believe to live
> in would qualify, an electoral ward that was abolished in 1905 and is
> only remembered by those of the age 120+, not so much), and if someone
> wants to map it as a relation (which cannot be done in a fuzzy way) then
> it must be sufficiently clear where the boundary is because else we'll
> have 10 mappers edit-warring over if a certain address still belongs to
> the posh neighbourhood of Silver Springs or to its seedy neighbour,
> Golden Showers.
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> --
> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>
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