[Talk-us] Map Roulette Idea - GNIS "parks"

Mike Thompson miketho16 at gmail.com
Tue Oct 6 21:25:23 UTC 2015


A subset of the the US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) data was
imported into OSM [2]. I have discovered a systematic error in the GNIS. In
the US there are at least two different meanings for the word "park" when
it comes to things we might map in OSM. The first is a recreational
facility (leisure=park), the second is  “a broad, flat, mostly open area in
a mountainous region"[1].  In many cases the GNIS classified features with
"park" in their name as recreation facilities, when in fact they fit the
second definition. For example: https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/356504183.
Examining these features against the USGS topo maps usually makes their
true classification obvious. What do you think about a Map Roulette
challenge to fix these?

Proposed selection criteria:
* Part of original GNIS import.
* No manual edits
* Tagged leisure = park
* Name contains "Park"
* Name does not contain "national" "state", "county", "city" or
"recreation" (these are likely to really be a recreation facilities).

Map Roulette Instructions to Mappers:
* Examine USGS topo maps for the area where the feature is located.
* Examine Bing and/or other imagery
* If not correct classification isn't clear from above sources, consult
city and county websites to see if they have a recreation facility with the
given name in the given location.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a OSM tag to describe  “a broad,
flat, mostly open area in a mountainous region", yet I feel that these
names are important pieces of information that should be preserved in OSM.
Does anyone have any suggestions? GNIS classifies these "parks" as "flats",
but "flats" were not part of the import [3]


Mike

[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/park?s=t

[2] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import/Catalogue

[3] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/USGS_GNIS#Feature_Class
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