[Talk-us] National Forest boundaries

[stevea]

I don't think we should map all ownership in OSM either, however, there is a lot of tagging in OSM right now which does tag ownership=national, ownership=state, which, for public lands owned by the federal or a state government, I have no problem with making this distinction known in OSM tagging.  It doesn't "hurt" our data and I personally find it informative to make this distinction (sometimes as an OSM author, sometimes as an OSM consumer).  I feel here that Joseph is asking us to accept hyperbole ("we should not try to map all land ownership by parcel") when I'm not nor do I believe our volunteers are asking that.  (I understand why, I even agree, "let's not tip towards OSM as cadastral-oracle, those are elsewhere").  I might tag something ownership=national or ownership=state on some public land, because lots of us seem to be doing that and I find it useful data (sometimes).  OSM isn't looked to as a land-ownership database, even as it might have a sprinkling of those on data, especially "national vs. state" distinctions for public land.  That's fairly common around the world.

In California, if you don't put a Civil Code 1008 sign up on your private-land easement, de facto or de jure, it might become a public easement.  There are rules, they are local, I don't think OSM wants to quibble here.  We might need to quibble and sketch in some localized method of doing things at some level in some cases, that's manageable.  I am not an attorney.

It's OK to have similar conversations over and over again.  We get a bit smarter and sharper as we do, as long as we don't lose patience or civility.  I think we're fine in that department.

SteveA