[Talk-us] [Tagging] how to tag US townships?

[Anthony]

On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 12:24 PM, Alex Mauer <hawke at hawkesnest.net> wrote:
> On 10/21/2010 08:06 AM, Anthony wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 8:32 AM, Greg Troxel<gdt at ir.bbn.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>> So if we have whole-multiple-counties=5 (eg
>>> NYC) county=6 township=7 city/town=8 then it would make sense
>>> everywhere.
>>
>> What would be an example of a township that would be at admin_level=7?

This question of mine was quoted but still not answered.

>> So...if they don't do that much, should they be mapped as admin_level?
>>  I was told that school districts don't count, because they don't do
>> enough, which has me totally confused as to what it is we're supposed
>> to be mapping.
>
> It’s not about whether they do that much; it’s about whether they’re
> administered by a government.  School boards are a part of the government
> yes, but they’re don’t govern the districts that they cover.

Absolutely they do.

> Compare to postal codes…yes, it’s from an agency of the government but a
> post office does not govern the area that it serves.

There's no comparison.  Postal codes are numbers assigned to
addresses.  They're not even geographic areas, let alone geographic
areas which limit the jurisdiction of the elected officials who serve
on the governing board of them.

Were the post office a tax-sponsored government service, which was
broken up by geographic area, and had elected officials governing each
geographic area, who decided what services to provide, who imposed
taxes on residents of that geographic area, and who had the power of
eminent domain within that geographic area, and if each such
geographic area was assigned a postal code, then there would be a
comparison.  But none of that is true.

>> Is there anyone else who, in the United States, uses the notion of
>> admin_level?  In other words, the notion that administrative districts
>> across the entire country can be ranked from 1-9 (or 1 to whatever)?
>> The big problem is that that administrative districts in the US aren't
>> really hierarchical, or, at least, many of them are not.
>
> The point of admin_level is *not* primarily to record which governments are
> above another.  It’s to indicate which governments across different
> countries and states are (approximately) equivalent.

Then we shouldn't use numbers, or if we're going to use numbers we
should assign those numbers in random order.

> e.g. in the US,
> counties are counties are counties are Louisiana parishes are Alaska
> Boroughs are Virginia counties and cities and are at the same level as
> municipalities in Mexico, /powiaty/ in Poland, districts in Turkey, etc.

Same level?  What does the level mean if you aren't saying which one
is above the other?  Saying that there are levels implies one is above
the other.