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

[Alex Mauer]

On 10/21/2010 07:12 PM, Anthony wrote:
> 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?

I don’t have a specific, named example, but see pages 8-32–8-35 of 
http://www.census.gov/geo/www/GARM/Ch8GARM.pdf

>> 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.

In some (most) cases, you’re right, although it does vary from state to 
state.  They are special-purpose governments though.

>> 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.

Huh?  Why?  What do you propose instead?  Please don’t say “use the name 
of the entity”, because we already have a key that does that 
(border_type) and it would make it a nightmare to make a consistent 
international map.

—Alex Mauer “hawke”