[Talk-GB] traffic island mapping / harmful detail?

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 4/3/21 12:34, Nick Allen wrote:
> It may be that I was not the only mapper from the prehistoric era who 
> hadn't realised that some of their earlier mapping needed updating - if 
> they are also on talk-gb they're probably going through the same process 
> as me.

This particular issue has been discussed ad nauseam in the German 
community as well (generally termed "Flächenverklebung", area gluing). 
I'll sketch the current opinion in the German community below, without 
wanting to imply that others should use the same approach.

There is a wide consensus that two adjacent landuse areas should share 
the same nodes (or even be relations with a common way member), and that 
if there is a thing of very small width between the two, like a fence, 
it can also share these nodes. If the thing that separates them becomes 
as wide as a proper road, then most mappers advocate letting the road 
and both areas left and right of it have their own sets of nodes, with a 
little bit of "nothing" in between.

If the thing between the areas is not as wide as a proper road but not 
as small as a fence - maybe a footpath - it boils down to personal 
mapping style.

There are, however, individual mappers who would separate two adjoining 
landuses even if something as small as a fence was between them, and 
others who would glue land uses together even if between them was a 
full-blown unclassified road.

Advocates of the "glued together" approach say it simplifies mapping 
because it means less clutter in the editor, and makes it easier to 
transpose or refine the area-boundary-including-separating-geometry due 
to better imagery or so. Advocates of the "separate boundaries" approach 
say that no landuse ever extends to the road centreline so it shouldn't 
be mapped as such.

We (in Germany) generally request that mappers refrain from "cleaning 
up" an area to match their personal mapping style (either un-glue ways 
from areas, or glue separate ways to areas) unless they upgrade it in 
other ways. I.e. if someone edits an area just to change how adjacent 
areas and lines are mapped, we don't view that as an improvement but 
just fiddling.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"