[Talk-us] TIGER 2022 PLACE dataset

[stevea]

Regarding MoiraPrime's "upgrading" of the Diamondhead, Mississippi CDP from a boundary=census to a BETTER (new!  improved!) boundary=administrative + admin_level=8 polygon, YES!  Nice job, MoiraPrime!  This is exactly correct and I personally appreciate you doing this and getting it exactly right.

And regarding your (MoiraPrime's) question about the Census Bureau /designating/ a CDP:  yes, they do that.  You must ask yourself, though, "how important is what the Census Bureau says about a 'thing' (it's not a real 'thing' it is a statistically-defined 'thing' by a federal bureaucracy) do you want to say?"  How important in the case of "many" people (in OSM, in the USA) is "not very important," since it is a "squishy, wobbly, statistically-defined mathematical 'thing' that is obsolete the day after it is published."  How important in the case of the people who live there, work there, have family there...and maybe even map in OSM there?  THEY might say "Well of COURSE this 'thing' that we call 'home' (or 'a certain place') should be mapped."  And everybody is correct.

So, you are not wrong, it IS "the most verifiable and accurate data you can get," but it is "just" a census boundary:  a statistically-defined "thing" that OSM is careful to distinguish as different from an administrative boundary.  These really are different things.  One is, at least in the USA, what we call "incorporated" and has a city charter and follows state-constitutionally recognized rules for becoming a "city."  The other, not.  It didn't do any of those things, it is "merely" an aggregation of people that are conveniently known by a name, so the Census Bureau draws a blobby line around this and gives it that name.  By the way, the rules by which this is done are made up out of whole cloth by the Census Bureau, made out of "statistics."  (See the famous quote by Mark Twain about those).

So we tag what was previously NOT a city, but a census boundary as boundary=census.  Then we tag (the slightly different, with NEW! and IMPROVED! boundaries) new city as boundary=administrative + admin_level=8.  Because that is what it is (now).  Hooray!