[OSM-talk] hierarchical or flat multipolygons?

[Russ Nelson]

Hi. I'm editing the Hudson River all as one entity, from its beginning
in the Adirondacks to its end at NYC. Along the way, there are some
islands that need to be excluded, so it's not just riverbank,
riverbank, riverank. It's riverbank, multipolygon(riverbank, island,
island), riverbank.

In theory at least, I could make the whole riverbank into one
multipolygon, with a bunch of outers (about 50) and inners (about
200). Would that create a problem for other editors? To load the whole
thing, you would have to load a LOT of nodes.

Or, conversely, should I keep it as about 20 plain ways and 30
multipolygons? But what kind of a relation do I make for the entire
riverbank? It was type=collection, but the wiki barfs all over that. I
tried making it a multipolygon of multipolygons, but JOSM barfs up on
that ("Non-Way in multipolygon"). Is there even a way to tag this
properly? For now, I'm keeping it as type=collection just to upload it
for safekeeping.

Should this "Hudson Riverbank" relation be flat or hierarchical?

-- 
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