[Talk-us] Delete "Contiguous United States"?

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

today I happened upon a relation called "Contiguous United States"
(https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/9331155) and tagged as an
administrative boundary.

I would recommend to delete this relation because:

1. There is no administrative entity called "Contiguous United States".
The "Contiguous United States" has no legal persona and no government.
It cannot therefore be an "administrative boundary".

2. As far as I know, the "Contiguous United States" is simply a group of
states. As such, it does not have its own boundary. If, say, the
maritime boundary of Florida were to change, then the "Contiguous United
States" boundary would also change. Hence, if it *were* modeled in OSM,
it should be modeled as group of states and not as an individual
geometric form.

3. Like any of these giant multipolygon and boundary relations, it
complicates editing - anyone splitting, say, a way on the US-Canadian
border will not only have to upload new relation versions for the US,
Canada, and the states/provinces involved, but also a new version of the
800+ member "Contiguous United States". That's why this relation is
meanwhile at version 270 without a lot having *actually* changed.

If it were my home turf I'd just go ahead and delete it but since it's
not, I'll limit my actions to this post and leave any further actions or
inactions to you.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"