[Talk-us] National Forest boundaries

[stevea]

A large thank-you to Kevin for that deeply informative post.

> brad <bradhaack at fastmail.com> wrote:
> I think its simpler and better to just create an inner boundary as was done with the Coconino NF

The Coconio NF (relation/10956348) hasn't "an" inner boundary, it has hundreds of them.  I'm not sure I understand what Brad is saying is "simpler and better" here, as a well-constructed multipolygon in OSM is "a well-constructed multipolygon in OSM."  We already know how to do that so I don't think we want to develop something else to represent the same thing.

Is Brad or Mike proposing something else, like two multipolygons to describe one national forest?  I'd be against that (unless I hear and understand more).  Perhaps Brad can tell the list what he thinks is "simpler and better" in the context of a well-defined multipolygon with one or more outer members, one or more inner members (as we've established) and then what he might propose?  There is something intriguing with how Mike worded it ("separate polygons for inholdings, tagged with access=private and possibly ownership=private") which is certainly novel, and I'm willing to listen to that, but I don't quite understand what he means.  Two relations for one forest?  Our wider tagging practices don't (currently) understand this (two relations, one entity), nor do any renderers (that I know of), but this sort of access/ownership tagging on a separate polygon is an idea that might allow us to pack semantics into a relation (or two relations?) in a way I haven't thought of before.  Kind of pie-in-the-sky, but I'll listen, provided I fully understand what is being proposed.

We've established there are "more simply described" national forests where more-or-less "only" (or substantially only) the outer polygon is a member of the relation, and "very well described" national forests with highly complex memberships (perhaps multiple outer polygons, and numbering into the hundreds of inner elements, like Coconio).  OSM (in my opinion) has room to accept both, knowing that while the latter is much more complete, the former might be either a case of "very few if any inholdings, so essentially 'done'" or it might be "a rough sketch of (only) the outer polygon member to get the relation started, more inner polygon memberships need to be added to this relation."  And that's OK, but if / as we do so, let's make note of it (perhaps a FIXME tag in the relation with value "Incomplete; needs more inner members to describe the full gamut of all inholdings in this forest.")

SteveA