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

[stevea]

On Sep 8, 2022, at 3:56 PM, Greg Troxel <gdt at lexort.com> wrote:
> Stepping way back...
I thank you for that, Greg and even step out further myself, as I call attention to Minh's diary entry [1] and my subsequent wiki entry linking it that there are so many mind-bending examples of how far these concepts attempt to extend...you find it fails.  Or somewhere around there.  It is somewhere around very difficult or provably impossible that our imagined shoehorn of magical numerical hierarchy (admin_level) truly fully works.  Even for intelligent, kind, patient, generous, even largely agreeable people.  We may have taken it as far as we (in the USA) can.

This topic / these topics do have a lot of smear about them.  It is good to keep scope tight and focused.  Yes, there are admin_levels and boundaries, there are populated places, a crucial distinction; thanks again, Greg.

There is some overlap of these, things like admin_center-ish semantics of "place" and there's all sorts of linking and tangents.  I'd say United_States/Tags#Places might be a best guide here...again, links, overlaps, even among authorship on this email.  We know enough to know we don't know everything about this, and maybe we can't.

This really is one of those "we're all (of us) right" (at the same time) difficulties. Maybe some "it doesn't matter how much math or social grease is added, this can't work perfectly," too.

There remains a well-stated and -steered "last call" to retag some nodes.  This seems like a good idea.  We have had some spirited and interesting (I hope some light and not much heat) dialog.  I think it will continue, likely on some one-to-one channels.  We are careful.  We are aware there are many voices in busy places as we map around ourselves.

Places are places as local people see them.  Words like hamlet, village, suburb, neighbourhood... are both values that connote things (in OSM) and mean different things in different places (in the real world).  Be aware of this, be aware that even as you do, things change.  Tag accordingly.

It's complicated out there.  (And, we can do it; we do).

> I think in general we in OSM haven't bitten this off hard and dealt with
> it; it's messy and requires better formal geography knownledge than I
> have so far.  I have personally not dug in because MA ended up with
> defined-boundary towns around the places that are town centers in the
> populated places sense, plus lower-level villages that place=village or
> place=hamlet, based on population serve well.

See, there seems to be a near-constant sense there is room for improvement.  I find chasing after that worthwhile, until it completely exhausts, choking on its own fumes (we're far from that happening / hasn't yet).  Indeed, some place nodes will feather ahead, some fingers are stuck into the wind to see how we do on this.

I say:  Incremental improvement = a good thing.

[1] https://www.osm.org/user/Minh%20Nguyen/diary/398893
[2] https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/United_States_admin_level#Townships