[Talk-GB] Town v City (again, sorry!)
This was last discussed back in February: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2014-February/015867.html when someone (in the UK) changed a number of place=city to place=town. The discussion at the time covered: 1) place=city in OSM might or might not not mean the same as is a ceremonial city, as defined in the UK 2) We need some way to represent ceremonial city, if it's not to be place=city 3) There's also a subjective local importance factor (Cambridge Bedford was mentioned) 4) A scheme that coincided with what's done globally would be preferred over anything UK specific. 5) We need to decide on something and document it. (apologies if I'm misrepresenting or missing anyone's views here) The reason that I'm dragging this up again is that a number of changes were made in changesets such as: http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/21837294 http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/21837294 I'd have expected any mass-change of cities and towns in the UK and Ireland to at least try and discuss the change beforehand, which didn't happened (someone on #osm-ie has already said that the changes to Galway and Waterford were not correct according to their understanding). I may be over-paranoid, but the description of the Wolverhampton change above as town (near city) does suggest that there's a certain amount of for the renderer going on here too. I'll ask the author of the changes what criteria they were using for their changes, but in the meantime I guess we need to try and come to some sort of decision as to what place=city in OSM means in the UK. Cheers, Andy ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Town v City (again, sorry!)
On 22/04/14 13:29, SomeoneElse wrote: 1) place=city in OSM might or might not not mean the same as is a ceremonial city, as defined in the UK There is no might about it. The wiki at least is explicit: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:place%3Dcity Smaller charter cities should normally be tagged using place=town to avoid these places being promoted too highly in gazetteer search results That's using US terminology but it's basically the same thing, that you shouldn't base place=city on the local legal status. 2) We need some way to represent ceremonial city, if it's not to be place=city Sure, if you want uk_legal_status=city then go ahead and add that. 3) There's also a subjective local importance factor (Cambridge Bedford was mentioned) Agreed. The wiki says largest, but I think a degree of importance is relevant as well. 4) A scheme that coincided with what's done globally would be preferred over anything UK specific. Absolutely, which is why the definition is not tied to the legal niceties of specific jurisdictions. 5) We need to decide on something and document it. Well I think it already is documented, just people in the UK are trying to ignore the documentation. I'd have expected any mass-change of cities and towns in the UK and Ireland to at least try and discuss the change beforehand, which didn't happened (someone on #osm-ie has already said that the changes to Galway and Waterford were not correct according to their understanding). I may be over-paranoid, but the description of the Wolverhampton change above as town (near city) does suggest that there's a certain amount of for the renderer going on here too. Well there is a close correspondence between the agree meaning of city as the largest/most important places and what places people would expect to show up first on the map so while it may be mapping for the renderer it's also in agreement with the documented meaning of the tag. Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://compton.nu/ ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Town v City (again, sorry!)
There is no might about it. The wiki at least is explicit: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:place%3Dcity But has also had the meaning pretty much redefined in 2013 from how I understood it to be before then. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Tag:place%3Dcityold id=812669 Ed ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Town v City (again, sorry!)
On 22/04/14 14:10, Ed Loach wrote: There is no might about it. The wiki at least is explicit: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:place%3Dcity But has also had the meaning pretty much redefined in 2013 from how I understood it to be before then. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Tag:place%3Dcityold id=812669 Well I don't think the old definition was particularly sensible since it pretty much invites getting very different results in different places. Even the old rules had a caveat to try and stop local legal status being applied indiscriminately though, the Should normally have a population of at least 100,000 people and be larger than nearby place=towns rule. Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://compton.nu/ ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Town v City (again, sorry!)
If you want to know population, we should use a population tag. Given its history, much as we might like to pretend otherwise, place=city etc really *is* no more than an arbitrary hint to the renderer, and not much good either because it doesn't reflect the other criteria that would determine how prominent a place appears on a map. And of course those criteria would differ depending on what and who the map is for. Until there is another more diverse way of working out prominence, we'll keep going round in circles on this one. Current definition notwithstanding, I think I favour the place value being what people locally say the place is - if they think they are a city, then by the what you see on the ground method of mapping, that is what it is. But how the place (label in particular) is represented on a map ought to be up to that renderer, probably based on some weighted average of various criteria, perhaps including that local subjective judgement, the population bracket, home of an important institution, ... For example, on car maps I think there's an argument for bumping up the prominence of the set of place names used on green/blue (trunk/motorway) road signs in the UK, because of their usefulness in navigation. Scotch Corner is useful in this respect, but tiny (is it even a village?). David ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
