Speaking from personal experience as only one participant over many years (between say, 2012 with some agreement in 2015 and some refinement 2020) in a big country with a lot of states and dozens of their idiosyncrasies, getting admin_level values "right" can be a true, multi-year-long wrangle to get these "more or less correct by wide agreement" in any given country. Keep up the dialog, it can only get better.
Although, there are circumstances where it simply breaks down (in the USA, there is a "concurrent sovereignty" with aboriginal boundaries that isn't really mathematically / geographically / geometrically accurately capture-able with admin_level, so it isn't perfect and likely never will be). A "do our best" approach (in any given country, admin_level=2, down to the 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 levels) often has to go right down to the "here's what we do here, at this relatively-medium-low-level, and that's how it is" and OSM does its best to accurately fit that into the country-wide scheme (via wide agreement among that country's region's mappers). Tables with state-by-state entries can help, expect lots of footnotes as in [1], although, [2] is a "novice-friendlier" version. There are places where OSM agrees with and mimics what our USA Census Bureau does, there are places where it doesn't, though the reasons OSM does that (and where) are explained clearly in our wiki. That helps, too. Local knowledge is good here. Wide agreement is good here. Some edges where minor disagreement happens is likely inevitable, but I think Australia can "largely get this correct" even down to the neighborhood level (10). It takes years, it takes a great deal of dialog. It can be hard to say "how done it is." [1] www.osm.org/wiki/United_States_admin_level [2] www.osm.org/wiki/United_States/Boundaries _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
