[Talk-us-massachusetts] Talk-us-massachusetts Digest, Vol 41, Issue 5

Mon Feb 24 14:51:33 UTC 2020

I was adding addr:county tags to help me process towns when importing
addresses from MassGIS: I thought that there might be towns with same names
in different counties, so to avoid errors I was using County&Town
identifier. If there are any other ways to uniquely identify towns in MA,
I'm OK about deleting addr:county.

On Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 7:10 AM <
talk-us-massachusetts-request at openstreetmap.org> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Admin boundary tagging (Wayne Emerson, Jr.)
>    2. Re: Admin boundary tagging (Greg Troxel)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2020 11:30:02 -0500
> From: "Wayne Emerson, Jr." <ibemerson at verizon.net>
> To: Massachusetts List <talk-us-massachusetts at openstreetmap.org>
> Subject: [Talk-us-massachusetts] Admin boundary tagging
> Message-ID: <c227e849-d55d-65c7-cf40-2fe3d245b531 at verizon.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
>
> 1. Our admin boundary relations have an addr:county=* tag which gets
> flagged by JOSM as suspicious. While updating boundary geometry should I
> remove these tags? Why was this tag added?
>
> 2. Also some boundary relations have a place=town/city tag. But all
> cities & towns also have a node with this same tag. It seems to be the
> node that is used to render the town name in OSM-Carto. Is it wrong to
> duplicate place=* tags on both the place node as well as the boundary
> relation?
>
> 3. Sometimes both boundary relation & place node will be tagged with
> wikidata & population tags. The most common scheme seems to be to put
> the wikidata on the relation, and put the population on the place=*
> node. Anyone have different ideas on this?
>
> 4. When I update boundary geometry with the new Sept 2019 MassGIS data,
> I had been putting source on changeset. But now I wonder if putting
> source tag on lines also might be helpful.
>
> Thanks, - Wayne
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2020 11:47:07 -0500
> From: Greg Troxel <gdt at lexort.com>
> To: "Wayne Emerson\, Jr. via Talk-us-massachusetts"
>         <talk-us-massachusetts at openstreetmap.org>
> Subject: Re: [Talk-us-massachusetts] Admin boundary tagging
> Message-ID: <rmiwo8dqmic.fsf at s1.lexort.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain
>
> "Wayne Emerson, Jr. via Talk-us-massachusetts"
> <talk-us-massachusetts at openstreetmap.org> writes:
>
> > 1. Our admin boundary relations have an addr:county=* tag which gets
> > flagged by JOSM as suspicious. While updating boundary geometry should
> > I remove these tags? Why was this tag added?
>
> Basically I think you should be very cautious to believe JOSM warnings
> that aren't really obviously correct.  Thanks for bringing it up here.
>
> I am not clear on how addr:foo on boundaries leads to implicit
> addressing in terms of inheritance from objects inside, both in theory
> and in practice.  That would be good to understand to figure out how to
> proceed.
>
> While counties in MA definitely really exist, contrary to some the
> thinking of some deletionists, my understanding is that addresses, as
> used either by state/local government or the USPS, do not contain
> Counties as part of the address.*  This is different than Ireland for
> example, where the county is part of the addresss (and functions in some
> ways like a US state, but in some ways not).
>
> *In MA, you very definitely have to know what county you live in, as it
> is required to be put on government forms of various kinds, and it also
> shows up in deeds.  But I don't see it in addresses.
>
> So given all of this, the addr:county tags sort of feel like they are
> likely not really the right thing, but I really feel that I don't
> understand well enough to give that as advice.
>
> > 2. Also some boundary relations have a place=town/city tag. But all
> > cities & towns also have a node with this same tag. It seems to be the
> > node that is used to render the town name in OSM-Carto. Is it wrong to
> > duplicate place=* tags on both the place node as well as the boundary
> > relation?
>
> My understanding, slightly fuzzy, is that there are two almost
> completely logically separate things going on as fundamental geography
> concepts:
>
>   One is admin boundaries, which is about government jurisdiction etc.
>
>   The other is place names, which is about names people have for places
>   that have populations (or not), and in general place names refer to
>   sort of a point and the area around it with no real clear sense of
>   boundary.
>
> In MA, all land is in some town, so we end up with the same word being
> both a place name and a boundary name, and unless you are being pedantic
> about geography nobody really worries about which one you mean because
> it's usually clear by context.  They are sort of the same thing, but not
> quite.  And then we get place names that have no boundaries, like "West
> Acton", which is very hard to say where it ends.  This doesn't have an
> admin boundary becuase there is government distinction, but the village
> is well known and everyone knows where it is -- but not where it ends.
>
> I believe that best practice in OSM is to have a node with the place
> tag, separate from the boundary, and then to have a relation which has
> the boundary as one member an the place as the admin_centre member.
> Which is not quite right, as the town hall might not be at the place
> that the locals would put the dot on the map when asked "where should
> this town label be shown".
>
> > 3. Sometimes both boundary relation & place node will be tagged with
> > wikidata & population tags. The most common scheme seems to be to put
> > the wikidata on the relation, and put the population on the place=*
> > node. Anyone have different ideas on this?
>
> I am really not sure.  I find that population on a place= tag is
> semantically troubled as a place= tag does not have a defined extent and
> therefore it is not meaningful to talk about how many people are in it.
>
> Overall this feels like it would belong on the relation that contains
> the boundary and the admin center.
>
> > 4. When I update boundary geometry with the new Sept 2019 MassGIS
> > data, I had been putting source on changeset. But now I wonder if
> > putting source tag on lines also might be helpful.
>
> OSM practice for multiple years has been to put source data on the
> changeset only, and not to have source data on any of the objects in the
> database.  So what you are doing sounds exactly right.
>
> It would be great if someone were to check that all our country
> boundaries were intact.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
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> ------------------------------
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> End of Talk-us-massachusetts Digest, Vol 41, Issue 5
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