[Talk-us-massachusetts] Why Barnstable is such a mess, and other MADness (Wayne Emerson, Jr.)

[Greg Troxel]

"Wayne Emerson, Jr. via Talk-us-massachusetts"
<talk-us-massachusetts at openstreetmap.org> writes:

> be snipped out and incorporated into the OSM map. In reading over the
> MassGIS descriptions I believe it said that in that in these 11
> communities a valid address would need to include the name of the
> "Community"

Do you read this as:

  in these places, the  thing that goes where people expect town name is,
  is one of these community names

or

  in these places, addresses include the community name and the actual
  town name

WHich is the difference between

  option 1:

  123 Main Street
  Hyannis, MA

and

  option 2:

  123 Main Street
  Hyannis, Barnstable, MA

In my experience, option 1 is how it is written and option 2 seems
seriously bizarre.

Part of why I say that is that I think if you asked 100 Mass residents
"Is Hyannis a town or city, like Belmont or Framingham", almost all of
them would say yes.   I think it is really not understood that it is
named sub-town of Barnstable, and that in terms of addressing and
navigation, nobody has any idea that it is like that, and everything
works because the addresses are written exactly as if it were a real
town.