[Talk-us] Retagging hamlets in the US

[stevea]

In Santa Cruz county (California), each place=* tag has been 
carefully compared to local knowledge and a wonderful reference 
(book) I have called "Santa Cruz County Place Names: A Geographical 
Dictionary" by author Donald Thomas Clark, published by the Santa 
Cruz Historical Trust.  At over 500 pages, it is a wonderful 
reference, and is rather clear on whether something is completely 
historical or accurate "currently" (the book is a bit dated, being 
published in 1986, but I have the 2nd edition from 2008).  The author 
was the first librarian at UC Santa Cruz and wrote a similar tome for 
Monterey County (also excellent).

Maybe you have or maybe you don't have such a similar (excellent) 
resource for your community.  I wish everybody did.  But you either 
DO have or CAN GET local knowledge (everywhere on Earth FOR 
everywhere on Earth) that can yield reliable, human sourced data for 
OSM to use.

And maybe these data are or maybe these data are not "on the ground 
verifiable," in which case I leave it up to you whether they should 
or should not be in OSM.  If a lonely crossroads gas station with a 
friendly owner says "Yep, it's called Orchard Crossroads around 
here..." that's good enough for me to put a hamlet into OSM -- I 
don't need a sign to tell me, the man who knows it to be true just 
did.

Retagging hamlets isn't something that can or should be mechanized by 
a bot.  It is going to take real effort, meaning local knowledge 
crafted by human beings.  Hm, this sounds like a good basis upon 
which to recruit more volunteers for our project....

SteveA
California