[Talk-us] Alt_names on counties

Paul Johnson baloo at ursamundi.org
Thu Dec 26 19:51:08 UTC 2019


On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 12:09 PM stevea <steveaOSM at softworkers.com> wrote:

> The myriad variations of "name" (alt, loc, nat, old, reg, official,
> sorting, int...) show how complex this is.  The issues go back many years
> and will likely continue well into the future, indeed many participants in
> this/these thread(s) are authors of our wiki's name page.
>
> Better documenting, continuing dialog, consensus-style agreement, changing
> data in the map to reflect our well- or better-documented conventions:  all
> of these get us closer to perfection.  Although I think everybody agrees,
> perfection is nigh on impossible, as "the map is never 'done.'"
>
> "Do our best."  If there is contention, discuss it.  If there is
> misunderstanding or disagreement, discuss it.  If there is agreement,
> document it and use it in the map and even write code that depends on it.
> We get there, we will better get there as we continue to do these things.
>

I wish it was even this straightforward.  Liberty Parkway in Broken Arrow,
OK being a great example.  The city calls it Creek Turnpike, the OTA calls
the route that traverses the length of it Creek Turnpike, the state
legislature officially renamed it Liberty Parkway.  To me, this speaks
loudly to calling it name=Liberty Parkway, loc_name=Creek Turnpike,
especially since when you're on it, it's signed as Liberty Parkway and the
only signs that still say Creek Turnpike are posted by the City of Broken
Arrow at the surface street end of ramps.  DWG went with how it's tagged
now, essentially erasing ground truth, something that I'm not satisfied
with but respect (especially given that data consumers will call out
"Continue for ___ kilometers/miles on Creek Turnpike" when passing a big
green sign that says LIBERTY PARKWAY after a confusing interchange).
Meanwhile in the same interchange at the cycleway level, Creek Turnpike
Trail, Liberty Parkway Trail and Mingo Valley Trail meet a three-way "y"
shaped intersection, and in a case of local amnesia, Broken Arrow won't
acknowledge Liberty Parkway's name, even though they themselves sign the
cycleway as Liberty Parkway Trail and even say they did that because it
runs frontage to Liberty Parkway, and that Liberty Parkway Trail name
persists for the entire length of the Liberty Parkway it runs adjacent to...

This speaks more to how stupidly complicated naming is in Oklahoma than
anything, but even on sections with easily five or six equally valid names
for the same road, it's not even that obvious to locals which should get
prime billing and some will go a long way to argue against the ground
truth.  See above again, Liberty Parkway.

I really wish Oklahoma would adopt Oregon's lead and have the concept of
honorific naming (Oklahoma does not), and post unique signs for the
honorific names instead of officially legally renaming stuff.  That'd at
least narrow it down to name:*= namespaces (where the * is mercifully
limited to various translations of the same name, like name=Bear Street,
name:en=Bear Street, name:mus=Nokose Yusten (lit. Bear Trail), or (slightly
more controversial but in practice the right call, given the vernacular
language is English and the official language is Cherokee in Tahlequah),
name=Muskogee Avenue, name:en=Muskogee Avenue, name:chr=ᎫᏐ ᎦᎳᏅᏛ (lit. Creek
Road) going from memory and my Cherokee is terrible, so apologies if I
slaughtered that).
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/attachments/20191226/2becc156/attachment.html>


More information about the Talk-us mailing list