Bill Ricker <bill.n1...@gmail.com> writes: > A manufactured armchair consensus, however long on a Wiki, may still be > wrong on the ground.
This point bears more complicated dicussion, but I think it's clear that something that was rough consensus in a general sense has been misrepresented to become a hard rule and a thing with a life of its own. People may have agreed with the notion that "admin_level is generally used to represent things in the hierarchy of governments". Reality is messy and we are functioning as geographers here. Part of the issue is that the US is (almost, AK) entirely divided into counties, and the federal government considers counties a real thing. So it is far more reasonable and helpful to represent all counties the same way, accepting fuzz on the degree to which they have government (which is highly variable anyway), than to make a tortuous cut point and declare some of them non-real. If somebody wants to have tag for admin_level that's a scale of 0 to 100 of how real their government is, that's fine. The problem is telling some people that their subdivisions aren't real, when that's not how the locals feel, and it's not how a geographer looking at the whole US would see it. (Agreed with your analysis that says "counties no longer exist" is wrong.) > If we the OSM are the Basemap to the World, not having Counties for CT and > RI as the same admin_level=6 as all the other states very awkward for our > downstream users. A huge point. We must remember why we are creating a map. > (My Ward and Precinct do not have elective officers nor staff of > government, but are accepted as admin_level=9 and 10 respectively; likewise > Neighborhood admin_level=10, Unincorporated community admin_level=8 need > not have officers nor staff.) I was going to point out ward/precint. My town has two precincts. They were created solely because of some state rule that precincts (a voting thing) cannot be bigger than so many people. So we have 1 and 2, and an arbitrary line. When you get to the single election place, you have to look at the map, sort yourself into 1 or 2 and go to one or the other checkin table, go to the matching voting booths, and the matching checkout table and ballot box. These totals are reported separately, for no actual reason and then promptly added. This is an artifact of no lasting value, and I would say 1% as worthy as being mapped as counties in Rhode Island. In Rhode Island, people know what county they live in. In my town, *I* don't even remember what precint I live in, and I'm a map nerd and a former town official. > The CT "Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) Council" is the strategic > alliance of producers and consumers of GIS in Conn Govt, in lieu of a > consolidated GIS department. Their Geographic Framework Data strategy > <https://www.ct.gov/gis/lib/gis/ct_geographic_framework_data_-_1-3-11.pdf> > [2006/2011] specifically calls *County* an "*Administrative Boundary*" in > (p.19, excerpted below) ; conversely RPO is listed as a *Thematic* basemap > (p.12) but *not* named as an "Administrative Boundary" (emphasis on *county* > supplied): That's interesting information. > CODACIL - RHODE ISLAND > The situation in RI is the same as Connecticut - the state is still lawfully > *divided* into Counties > <http://webserver.rilin.state.ri.us/Statutes/TITLE42/42-3/INDEX.HTM>, but > there is no *government* at County. > In fact, RI Counties are slightly *more* real than Conn Counties; RI > Counties still have County Towns > <http://webserver.rilin.state.ri.us/Statutes/TITLE42/42-3/42-3-1.HTM>. > (What Mass. and Olde England called Shire Towns. Conn Judicial Districts' > Court Towns are the same thing under a new name.) That seems like clear evidence of an adminstrative subdivision. _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
