Re: [Talk-us] Differences with USA admin_level tagging

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

Greg Troxel says "just plain wrong" about an older version of the Big Table row 
for Massachusetts that pre-dates my harmonization of New England states thanks 
to Peter Dobratz' contributions.  As I have subsequently harmonized Peter's 
table with the Big Table, Greg's point now appears to be moot.  Thank you for 
noting that harmonizing the Big Table with Peter's is "great progress."  That 
was a bit of sweat and tears last night (editing multiple sub-row tables is a 
somewhat trial-and-error-prone process) and I'm glad it's now done!  I have 
also "trimmed up" the introductory text about townships (in the Midwest, not 
New England) per your suggestion; thank you.  I have sharpened the statement 
about New England governments tending toward "weak-county / strong-town" as it 
is useful to support the notion of counties vanishing altogether in Rhode 
Island, almost disappearing in Connecticut and going-going-not-quite-all-gone 
in Massachusetts. If you still disagree, thinking it should be dropped, I 
welcome constructive text improvements to the introduction.

Whether Precinct demotes from 9 to 10 in Towns seems a valid point, especially 
how you make it.  However, I disagree that we should or shouldn't map such 
"low-level" details (admin_level=9, 10) in our map; I think we should if we 
can, which is why I am doing my best to document what values should be used, in 
all cases.  (Thank you to everybody who helps us create consensus to do so).  
Peter, I'd be curious what you think about demoting Precinct in Town from 9 to 
10 in Massachusetts.

Thanks, everybody:  great dialog!

SteveA
California
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Re: [Talk-us] Differences with USA admin_level tagging

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

Continuing my replies to this thread.

Greg Troxel writes:
The notion that Town and City are fundamentally different in
Massachusetts is incorrect.   I think that's the long and short of your
basis for commenting, but if I'm off please tell me.

Greg, Massachusetts' entry in US_admin_level's wiki table (the "Big Table") now 
reads (thanks, Peter Dobratz!):

4   5   6   7   8   
9   10
Mass.   N/A County  N/A TownPrecinct
N/A
Mass.   N/A County  N/A CityWard
Precinct

I believe this achieves harmony between what I have read/researched, what Peter 
said in the wiki's Discussion page, and what you say here, as both Town and 
City are admin_level=8, though they do diverge with 9 and 10 (hence, two 
"sub-rows").  Also, none of the six New England states has a "Township" (at 
admin_level 7, where it often lives; thanks again Peter).  I believe the table 
(in New England) agrees with your other "every bit of land is in exactly one 
municipal entity" concern.  (Almost, but not quite:  Vermont, New Hampshire and 
especially Maine have exceptions, these are noted in the Big Table's Notes; see 
Note 18).  If what the Big Table says (now) in Massachusetts isn't what you 
agree with, please continue to further clarify.  (No "hard time" taken here:  I 
think we have it about right!)

A subsequent post of Greg's suggests that "villages and hamlets are place names 
not administrative divisions."  The Big Table does not list those, so I think 
it's OK.  And, YES:  your "key point" that OSM has words (e.g. Town, City) with 
OSM-defined meanings, yet "each state may well use those same words to mean 
different things, and we have to be careful to separate local language and OSM 
language" is so very true:  a "land mine" potentially rife with 
misunderstanding and confusion.  This is why it makes sense to be precise and 
hash this out in our community.  In that context, one topic to have clearly 
emerged is that for "unincorporated areas," OSM is better served by a node with 
place=* tagging, rather than a (multi)polygon with boundary=administrative + 
admin_level=* tagging.  And the wiki so states, with "rule of thumb" values for 
the place=* tag.

SteveA
California

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Re: [Talk-us] Differences with USA admin_level tagging

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

Adam Franco writes his general agreement that Greg's assessment of 
Massachusetts applies to Vermont.  As I compare these two rows in the table, 
they are identical at admin_levels 6, 7 and 8, differing only in Precinct and 
Ward at 9 for the former and Village and District for the latter.  I do mention 
"Gores" (et al) in the Notes (specifically Note 18) as being best described as 
not part of any administrative division below the state (4) level.  I believe 
the process you describe for tagging villages and towns in Vermont is correct 
(to the extent they are actually census or special-purpose districts, as for 
water/sewer), however be aware that when such entities are "incorporated" they 
most likely rise to the level of deserving of an admin_level tag.  Adam, if any 
of that is not OK, please chime in.

SteveA
California

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Re: [Talk-us] Differences with USA admin_level tagging

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

Kevin Kenny writes:
(In New York City), each borough is divided into community districts.

This begs the question as to whether the sub-row
4   5   6   7   8   
9   10
New YorkNYC Borough N/A N/A N/A 
N/A

might also include "District" at admin_level 8, and Kevin suggests this, so I 
have added it to the Big Table.

I believe Kevin's other concerns (the whole state is incorporated into towns, 
cities or villages, the City of Geneva straying from it's "primary" county of 
Ontario to Seneca isn't all that unusual and is mentioned elsewhere in the 
wiki, Sherrill is a documented exception, etc.) are already properly addressed, 
with one exception:  he suggests that Town and City are equivalent at 
admin_level=7, but the Big Table had City at 8 (along with Hamlet, which it is 
allowed to subsume).  I have corrected that in the Big Table so that City moves 
from 8 to 7 in New York.  His other concerns regarding "special purpose (and 
school) districts" are addressed in the wiki.  Thank you, Kevin, for 
contributing more clarity!

Subsequently, Greg disagrees with Kevin regarding Town and City both being 7.  
I believe Kevin lives in New York and shows significant knowledge of this 
topic, so I defer to his judgement here.  Especially after Kevin directly 
addresses Greg in the next message:  the only topic after that is whether or 
not Wards exist as administrative boundaries and what value the corresponding 
admin_level might be (9?) and which of four sub-rows for New York in the Big 
Table Wards might live.  (If they exist, I'd agree with Kevin that they 
subordinate to Town, then Village).

As I have recently realigned the New York row to harmonize with their dialog, I 
believe their final "I guess is exactly my question, more succinctly" is now 
moot.  But if you guys still have more to say about it, I'm all ears!

SteveA
California

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[Talk-us] Fwd: [Wikimedia-l] [fellowship] Opportunity for people working on "open projects that support a healthy Internet."

[Pine W]

Forwarding.

Pine


-- Forwarded message --
From: Melody Kramer 
Date: Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 2:26 PM
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] [fellowship] Opportunity for people working on "open
projects that support a healthy Internet."
To: wikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org


Hi all,

I wanted to pass along an opportunity that I saw earlier today via Twitter:
https://medium.com/read-write-participate/work-in-the-open-
with-mozilla-1410be0a83b2

It sets up people working on "open projects that support a healthy
Internet" with a mentor, a cohort of like-minded people from all over the
world, and a trip to Mozfest, which is a London-based open Internet
conference I've attended/presented at in past years and found really
mind-expanding due to the cross-disciplinary conversations that take place.

You can see previous projects here: https://mozilla.github.
io/leadership-training/round-3/projects/ — it looks like there's quite a
broad cross-section and many of the projects across the movement might be
applicable. The post notes participants will learn about "best practices
for project setup and communication, tools for collaboration, community
building, and running events."

Thank you to Leila for suggesting I pass this along to this listserv. Feel
free to share it broadly.


- Mel


--
Melody Kramer 
Senior Audience Development Manager
Read a random featured article from Wikipedia!


mkra...@wikimedia.org
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Re: [Talk-us] Differences with USA admin_level tagging

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

I'll "pop the stack," answering the most recent first.

Minh, genuinely, you are welcome for a wider dialog.  I am cheered to see a 
good deal of reply to this.

As you say my edits "may well be the right edits to make" (I agree) it only may 
be true that "mappers who focus on these regions deserve a heads-up and an 
opportunity to agree or disagree."  If that were true, any (not simple) attempt 
I might make to identify such mappers would be unsatisfactory to at least 
someone (or would seem cursory or be incomplete, or would "take too long..."), 
and could easily be pointed to as flawed.  That feels like I am being boxed 
into a can't-win situation.  That doesn't seem in the spirit of OSM, which I 
find disappointing.

My edits that you carefully curated were no more "systematic" than changing a 
few maxspeed=* values from 35 to 30 when fresh eyeballs demonstrate Speed Limit 
signs read "30" along the ways.  (A Speed Limit sign is "regulatory" in our 
Vehicle Code, meaning it is an established truth for the maxspeed tag's 
semantics).  In the case of my edits to American Samoa and Guam, these are US 
Territories, so I have (as does any OSM volunteer) permission to set those 
values correctly (as they are defined in US law), with just as much authority 
as a Speed Limit sign does for a maxspeed=* tag.  Speaking with maximum 
politeness, I resent the characterization of "drive-by."  That means "casual, 
superficial, offhand" and these edits were no such thing:  no more so than 
driving past a Speed Limit 30 sign, finding the tag on the corresponding way 
wrongly set to 35 and setting it to "30" to correct our map data.  I can 
certainly conclude that maxspeed or admin_level values are something I can 
identify as wrong, then edit into correctness.  Right?  I hope we agree that I 
(and you, and all OSM volunteers) can do something as simple as conclude "hm, 
the data are wrong" in our map, then correct them.  If not, OSM is in big 
trouble!

If Nominatim is or gets confused (because it makes assumptions?), then fix 
Nominatim.  I (and many others) do good work by entering correct data into the 
map.  We are admonished, um, reminded frequently "don't code for the [renderer, 
geocoder, reverse-geocoder...]," so, we don't.  Right?  Entering correct data 
is a "most important" task!

I was and am surprised by the glib presumption of "After all, the wiki works 
best when its pages closely reflect the state of the map...".  Huh?  That is 
fresh!  (Or "backwards?"  It is a presumption that seems upside down.)  I've 
been reading wiki in OSM for most of this project's lifetime and MY go-to 
reason for doing so is when I get befuddled about our correct methods:  "How do 
I do or tag something that is not in OSM...?" then the wiki guides me:  "this 
is how you should tag."  I think many, even most OSMers would agree with that 
experience ringing true again and again.  We don't read the wiki to see what is 
in the map, we can look at the map or underlying data to see what is in the map.

Perhaps the "blue-sky-ing" going on is your (exclusive?) wish, given your 
clearly identified activism that you'd like to change this:  you say let's move 
the wiki away from "tag like this" (prescriptive) to "the map tags as we 
document here" (descriptive).  Rather than be judgmental and against this (as I 
might appear to be now), I have swallowed my distinct surprise at this approach 
of yours since you presented it to me (for the first time, I might add, in my 
8+ years of reading OSM wiki) and done my best to co-exist with it:  diligently 
working dozens of hours in the last week to achieve personal and project-wide 
consensus with you and OSM.  Personally in email, in the map, tuning up wiki 
and now in the wider forum of talk-us.  Yet while I don't think I'm the only 
one who finds your wiki-as-what-we-do, not what-we-should-do as odd, I believe 
it is the root of the friction on this topic.  Creating a "side project" wiki 
with an unusual approach to how our wiki is often used (as you yourself say you 
are doing) feels like a slight towards my more traditional approach of 
improving the United_States_admin_level wiki so it "always approaches more 
correct of how we should tag."  Please help me understand how I might be wrong 
or misled here, if indeed I am.

Hope that our community engagement here will "result in a more accurate wiki," 
well, yes, of course.  Obviously I wish that and a more accurate map, too.  
Especially as the wiki informs and guides us to help make a better map.  But, 
both.  Not one at the expense of the other.

Long enough, already.

SteveA
California
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[Talk-us] Directions as route relation roles

[Albert Pundt]

The wiki page Highway Directions In The United States lists a method of
tagging directions in route relation roles that sets the role as the posted
direction of the way in OSM's forward direction. For single-carriageway
roads, this means that backwards is the opposite cardinal direction.
Presumably two-way roads carrying only one direction of a route (which only
exist in brief segments, but are common nationwide) are still given just
"forward" and "backward". Or would multiple values be used, e.g.
"north;forward"?

My question is whether this is actually commonly used. I haven't seen this
method used anywhere, but then again I haven't really looked either. How
widespread is this practice?
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Re: [Talk-us] Differences with USA admin_level tagging

[Adam Franco]

Just to weigh in from Vermont, the situation Greg mentions in Massachusets
also applies in Vermont:

On Jul 9, 2017 3:14 PM, "Greg Troxel"  wrote:
>
> From a state government point of view, the state is divided into
> municipalities., where every bit of land in the state is in exactly one
> municipal entity.  Whether a particular entity is Town vs City is merely
> a detail of the form of government, in terms of Board of Selectman and
> Town Meeting vs Mayor and City Council (more or less; there are multiple
> kinds of cities and that's messy, but they all I think have councils).
> Both have zoning bylaws, general bylaws, property tax, police chief,
> school committees, planning boards, conservation commissions, and
> various other things all the same.  The town meeting vs city council is
> really a minor distinction.  Sometimes a town changes into a city; I
> think Framingham just did or is about to.  Other than people who live
> there and elections, it's almost unremarkable except for rarity.
>
> In particular, cities are not contained within towns.  They are peers,
> fully equal in all ways, with a minor difference in government
> organization.  Nobody I know thinks one is at a higher level than the
> other.


In Vermont "Towns" and "Cities" are peers that are mutually exclusive, have
equivalent statutory rights and responsibilities, but differ only in the
mechanism of government (mayor + City Council for Cities, versus
Selectboard for Towns). Cities never contain towns or vice versa. They
should have the same administrative level in OSM.

Cites and Towns fully subdivide the counties, with one exception: "Gores
", small left-over
slices left unincorporated. These could be considered the same level of
hierarchy as Towns and Cities, but do not actually have a Town government
as they are too small, usually 0-20 residents. Their management handled by
the state in lieu of a functioning Town Government.

Vermont has many dense collections of homes and businesses that are
colloquially referred to as villages or towns. Some of these dense areas
may have municipal water/sewer and additional facilities such as a
post-office, however these densely populated areas do not have government
independent of the Town government. Their borders are amorphous and based
more on where services are provided and settlement patterns than any legal
status. These village centers were imported from TIGER as
boundary=administrative_area,admin_level=8, and I've started re-tagging
them as boundary=census when I come across them.



On Sun, Jul 9, 2017 at 3:25 PM, Kevin Kenny 
wrote:

> On Jul 9, 2017 3:14 PM, "Greg Troxel"  wrote:
>
>
> Kevin Kenny  writes:
>
> > So to me, what makes sense for New York:
> >
> > admin level 2 - United States of America
> > admin level 4 - New York State
> > admin level 5 - New York City, special case
> > admin level 6 - County, Borough (within New York City)
> > admin level 7 - Town, City
> > admin level 8 - Vlllage, hamlet (where borders defined), community
> > district (New York City), City of Sherrill
>
> It seems from reading your comments cities are within towns, that a
> house within a city is also within a town.
>
>
> Villages can span the borders between Towns, but in  all cases the
> residents of a Village are also residents of some Town.
>
> Cities are independent of Towns. Every resident of New York is a resident
> of exactly one City, Town, or Native American reservation.
>
> Single exception: For most purposes the City of Sherrill is administered
> as if it were a Village within the Town of Vernon.
>
> I'm pretty sure I have the ordering right. The specific level numbers are
> negotiable.
>
> A handful of Towns have Wards. I've never tried to map one and I'm not
> familiar enough with how they exist 'on the ground.
>
> So I do not follow putting
> them at the same level.  But it also seems that legally the notion that
> a house in a city is within the town has no consequence, in terms of not
> having to follow town law (perhaps there are no town laws) and not
> having to pay town taxes.  So I think you are saying that effectively
> being in a city means you aren't within a town, even though you are
> within the polygon.  Is that a fair read?
>
> The other question I have about your list is about town/city being at 7
> vs 8.  It seems that in most states, the city type of thing is at 8.
> The numbers are arbitrary, just leaving room for some 7 thing that might
> or might not exist.  But it seems good in terms of data consumers for
> ~everything that's sort of like a city (to include Mass towns) to be at
> 8, to reduce the need for special-case code.  That would put
> village/hamlet at 9, which strikes me as also aligned.
>
> This raises the notion if there are places in the US where there is
> something smaller than a county and bigger than a city in 

[Talk-us] Brookline, MA is in Norfolk County, not Suffolk County

[Andre Robatino]

I originally posted this question at
https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/56981/brookline-ma-is-in-norfolk-county-not-suffolk-county
, and was referred here in a comment. OpenStreetMap believes that
Brookline, MA is in Suffolk County, but it's actually in Norfolk County
(as a noncontiguous part). In one of the comments, Frederik Ramm stated

It was ok in late 2014: http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/qib - it got broken
in this edit http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/25407313 and then
wrongly "repaired" in this http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/25426805

Could someone help in fixing the Norfolk and Suffolk County boundaries?
Thanks. (I'm a brand-new user, I signed up specifically to see if it was
possible to fix this issue.)

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