[Talk-us] Tagging National Forests

[stevea]

Jeffrey Ollie replies:
>On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 10:16 PM, stevea 
><<mailto:steveaOSM at softworkers.com>steveaOSM at softworkers.com> wrote:
>Me collecting firewood makes this a forest producing timber.  Full stop.
>
>So my backyard is a forest now?  My backyard has trees, and I 
>collect all of the downed branches and use them when I build fires 
>in my fire pit.  I really don't see how it's useful to take the 
>definition of a "forest" to such an extreme.

This isn't extreme.  Your backyard activity is consistent with the 
definition of a forest:  a land which is used for the production of 
wood/lumber/timber/firewood/pulp/et cetera.  Even if this is just you 
or me picking up twigs and branches for a modest fire, whether your 
backyard (which IS your backyard, you are USING it as a forest if you 
do so) or our National Forests.

Anybody who wonders why I act like such a stickler about this hews to 
the maxim of "nobody likes it when someone takes something away from 
you" (especially when, as usual, they have no right to do so).  So, a 
brief story:

Recently, an OSM volunteer in Washington state changed many 
California State Parks from leisure=park to leisure=nature_reserve. 
As the latter is a much "higher" classification (more protection, 
usually less public access or usage), this felt like a distinct 
"taking" (in the US Constitution 5th Amendment sense of the word): 
even if it's "just" OSM tagging, somebody was taking away my 
enjoyment to recreate in my park by tagging it something more 
restrictive.  For a short time, we agreed to disagree, but eventually 
he relented and either changed these tags back to park or he let me 
do this, and he stopped further making such changes.

While not exactly the same with "landuse=forest" being deprecated on 
USFS polygons, the analogy holds:  taking away designation of this 
polygon as having a land use of forest feels like somebody is saying 
"you can't collect firewood here any longer."  Except, I CAN collect 
firewood in National Forests (unless otherwise prohibited, something 
I fail to see anybody bolster with any evidence to the contrary). 
While minor, and I agree, seeming like a small technicality, this 
feels like a "taking" (away from me, and all owners/users of our 
National Forests) and hence, I've legitimately got something to say 
about it.

Again, I agree that it is fully correct going forward to use 
boundary=protected_area and protect_class=6 on these -- except that 
schema doesn't render in mapnik/Standard.  (IT SURE WOULD BE NICE IF 
IT DID SOON!)

Then, there is the very large issue of landcover=* as a tag, and IT, 
TOO, is not rendered in mapnik/Standard.

We press ahead on these topics, though I still see only minor 
progress.  And even a bit of "drubbing" (in the guise of "let's take 
a majority vote").

Can we at least have the magical/silent/invisible process of updates 
to mapnik rendering chime in and say "yes, talk-us, it would be good 
if mapnik began to implement rendering of boundary=protect_class and 
landcover=*?"  Oh, those are not-especially-well-defined tags, hm, 
that could prevent good rendering, as "the rules aren't fully 
established," so how can we write a renderer that implements them? 
Well, everybody, let's roll up our sleeves and do these.  Otherwise, 
we will keep having the landuse=forest-on-USFS-polygons discussion 
over and over again forever.  Or, I am all ears to listen to other 
proposals that will allow distinct forward momentum.

SteveA
California
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