[Talk-us] Unfortunate labeling of Au Sable State Forest, MI

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

the DWG has received a complaint that goes as follows:

"East and northeast of Grayling. Michigan is a large tract of forest 
labelled the Au Sable State Forest Grayling Unit on your maps. This may 
in fact be true but in fact that forest area is the largest military 
reservation for the National Guard east of the Mississippi River. Units 
from all over the country come there for live fire exercises. That 
includes Air Guard, not just artillery. Hence that is emphatically NOT 
an area where someone could just wander into and camp & fish. Believe 
me, I live forty miles away from the reservation and can hear explosive 
impacts all the time. Therefore I would not prominently label that area 
as a state forest! Consider its proper name, which is the Camp Grayling 
Join Maneuver Training Center."

It appears that everything is technically correct in OSM; there's one 
of those much-beloved huge relations for the State Forest's "Grayling 
Unit", here

https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/13965599#map=11/44.7162/-84.4203

and it appears that most of the Camp Grayling area lies within the state 
forest.

I assume that the complainant's assumption that just because something 
is a state forest you can go there for camping and fishing is just wrong 
and I will tell them as much. But as you can see, by an unfortunate 
twist of the labelling algorithm, the large green lettering "Au Sable 
State Forest - Grayling Unit" appears bang in the middle of the hatched 
military area and could well give the wrong impression that this area is 
the state forest.

I have no idea how this could be fixed. It probably can't. Just raising 
it here for awareness.

Bye
Frederik

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