[OSM-talk] is_in and similar tags

[andrzej zaborowski]

2009/7/28 Andy Allan <gravitystorm at gmail.com>:
> Let's stop the is_in debate - yes, they are useful to data consumers,
> no, they shouldn't be in OSM itself, and no, nobody has yet stepped up
> to sort it out.

One of the two ways to indicate belonging to an area should not be in
OSM, agreed.  Why's this the is_in tags, is the final rationale the
space saving?

Take three villages belonging to some kind of administrative division.
 You may need more than three nodes to draw a boundary that contains
only these three nodes and no other nodes.  Then it depends on how
much space a (repeated three times) tag takes in your particular
format compared to space taken by a separate node + the way with a
couple of member nodes.

Or as a less practical example take two ways that cross one another
(one may be a bridge or tunnel), one officially belonging to county A
or postcode A and the other to B.

Cheers