[Talk-us] TIGER 2022 PLACE dataset

[stevea]

Nice, Elliott.  +1 to everything!

Things in OSM get mapped because "they are real enough to verify."  NEARLY ALL of the time, that's because "well, everybody can see them."  (Including the mapper who did).  With boundaries, no, we must wave our hands in the air a bit here.  We must talk about these in terms of "already agreed upon" so that we can "well state them, like on a map."  Today, we find that reality really very good, even excellent, but it has its real-world "can't do that, border is in dispute" or "despite our best efforts since 1905 (pick a date), the two (maybe more) countries cannot seem to come to agreement about exactly where a or the boundary line is."

Census boundaries are not that, they are "wobbly, numerically-defined things" that change, and rapidly.  They are essentially stale as quickly as they are published.  They exist for a reason, as they are a snapshot of a something.  Very much depending on local variability and reasoning (and the reasons change everywhere we go) a census boundary might or might not be "agreeable" to remain in OSM (sometimes for reasons closer to OSM, sometimes for reasons closer to "the people on the land who say so").

This a social process, where sometimes "local rules dictate" and sometimes "that's the method the rest of the world uses."  Where and how that unfolds seems to be a constant saga in OSM.  Certainly more often than not, a harmonious method is found and applied.

Realize:  "deep rabbit holes exist" and "sometimes people disagree" and "I stand corrected, I regret my error" and "that's how that should be tagged around here" and "that's how the rest of the world tags" and "well, that's true, but there are exceptions..." are all true.  At the same time.  It's not rancor or disharmony, it is discussion.  More often than not, it becomes harmonious.  Really, we are harmonious.  There are skirmishes on edges, yes, and we grow.

And a great many people say "that's a pretty good chunk of map data we have here, OSM," nodding our heads.