[Talk-us] LAST CALL - Retagging of place nodes in NewYork State

[D. Joe]

On Wed, Sep 07, 2022 at 02:07:22PM -0700, Minh Nguyen wrote:
> Vào lúc 13:07 2022-09-07, Greg Troxel đã viết:
> >The point of the OSM terminology is to label small vs large places
> >(people wise).  It is therefore not going to line up with usage of
> >similar terms that use the same words.
> 
> Moreover, the official status of each incorporated place is already tagged
> as border_type=* on the boundary relation. It isn't the most intuitive key
> name -- it's really the type of place or government rather than the type of
> border. 

I see this now. I have no problem with this. And contrary to the recent challenge that I review >10 years worth of discussion about administrative levels, I also see that, appreciate that, and have no quibble with it, either. Well, none that I'm willing to engage at the moment here. 

But as I've been reminded, this proposal is about the individual place nodes, not the polygons.

> But tagging the status on the boundary relation is consistent with
> counties and other cases where a boundary does not correspond to a distinct
> populated place and therefore doesn't have a place node as a member.

I'm rising to this mention of counties, after numerous false starts at various replies and retreats from them, because it most closely, cleanly, and constructively bears on my remaining concern, which I tried to raise in my first response, only to see it get buried under a barrage about all the hard work that's gone into the boundaries, and into places about which I have nothing to offer. Even though, to be clear, this is about the single nodes tagged as place= and I'm trying to address the question of how nodes are tagged only to get buried in. all. this. other. stuff. It's been very discouraging.

I tried to address this by my analogy of calling Montana a city. But this mention of practice around counties is better, since apparently it's not a contrived example, but an established practice.

I would submit that tagging a New York State town that does not have an identifiable center with a node *can* be analogous to the county situation, depending on the town. The case is perhaps even stronger, since, so far as I know, a great many, if not most, counties have a county seat, at least. A NYS town has ... a town hall, maybe. Maybe it has other government buildings, maybe not, but even then not necessarily in the same, single place. 

If we're supporting a plan to tag towns (in the New York sense) heterogeneously, then maybe we can acknowledge that not every town has any center to tag with a node (other than, as with a county, in the trivial geometrical sense), and certainly not nodes with tags that directly convey not only the misleading notion that there is a center, but that it has a certain quality or size.

In the case of Red House/Jóë́’hesta’ (the history of which on Wikipedia makes for very sad reading), were it in many other states it would probably not even be incorporated. I wasn't aware of it before but I am glad to know of it now--it is so superlative it makes a tempting (and practical) day trip destination, to bear some witness to what happened there. I was surprised that the least populated town is not in the least populated county (which would be a much longer trip for me!)

But, like Massachusetts as mentioned earlier, New York apparently tiles *all* its land with these sub-county governments, such that if there isn't already a city or village, there's a town government. But that does not mean there's any sort of identifiable population center. This town certainly is no hamlet--it's a scattering of what property remains from earlier depradations. So, I have to wonder, maybe it should have no place-tagged node at all, as is (not) done with a county?

I see Kevin Kenny has brought up his Town vs. City of Plattsburg work. Without the experience of the last several days, I'd be tempted to say that that is an excellent example of just what I am, and have been trying to say. The difference, I'm afraid, is that we still gets stuck on towns-have-centers model, that Plattsburg is a unique exception and that it's because there was a center, and it was removed. Maybe for Plattsburg. But for *some* other towns, maybe there never *was* a center to begin with? Or maybe whatever modest center it might have had, that it long has been diffused away from any distinct, identifiable importance as the town gained population and development.

I am *very* familiar with another New York town that has also had its center removed. I mentioned it earlier along with several that either never had a center, so far as I can tell, or had centers that have now been diffused away in developmental sprawl. I don't know whether they should just not have a place node at all, or whether they should get =municipality, or what, just that they don't have a center in the same way that Plattsburg once did and that Pittsford still does. At this stage, I'm disinclined to wade back into the weeds on any of those just now, content to decide later and just make the edits as I see fit, or leave it to others to sort out.

As great as the work here in New York has been, it is a vast project. To expect a single person to be able to grasp it all with any mastery is, I think, asking too much. That is the sense that I originally brought to this discussion. 

Though I am by far not new to OSM or to mapping, I am new to participation at this level. While a *lot* of the discussion has been constructive I am less surprised than I might once have been that the word "fragile" has appeared. To which point I'll say this: In terms of community participation tips, when someone tries to back away from a nerdfight? Just let them!