I don't know if here or https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Talk:Good_practice is a better place to discuss and eventually insert these suggested improvements into https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Good_practice#Verifiability (and its first section, "Map what's on the ground").
I suggest adding these essences of this thread there: "'Independent verifiability' is a crucial component of the Good Practice of mapping what is on the ground, as sometimes there IS no evidence on-the-ground that a map feature should be appropriately tagged anything in particular. For example, some boundaries are effectively invisible, but OSM maps them (and should). Also, there are no or few signs which say "Pacific Ocean" or "Rocky Mountains," yet OSM authoritatively maps these natural=* features with an agreed-correct name=* tag. Similarly, there are routes (road, bicycle, hiking, equestrian...) which might exist on a government-published map (and hence are ODbL-compatible) yet remain unsigned (or poorly signed) in the real world. From what authority must we determine the source "verifiability" of these "invisible" or "unsigned" map features? As long as these are "independently verifiable" (by a government map, legal / statutory decree, data authoritatively published on a website, by unanimous agreement among locals and a wider public or at least with very wide consensus), the map feature with its verifiable tags may be entered into OSM following Good Practice. 'Independent verifiability' means any member of the public, freely, anytime and with no special privileges can 'consult the source' and verify the data." I'm simply tossing that out here, if it shouldn't stick, please fix it. I think it important that the phrasing is first vetted (here or on the Talk page) and I do think something like this should be entered into our Good_practice wiki to clarify OTG as we have discussed it here. Thanks in advance for any brief review and comments / suggestions you might offer, SteveA _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
