On Nov 21, 2017, at 1:27 PM, Gleb Smirnoff <gleb...@freebsd.org> wrote: > Okay, I will withhold myself from touching polygons in the Santa Cruz County > for next couple of years, and let's see how your future experience with > SCCGIS goes on. We can get back to this question later in scope of Santa Cruz.
This is a very happy result, thank you for the good (if rather public in talk-us) dialog. I think it was beneficial to the greater OSM community that our dialog was so public, as Kevin and I have been discussing "shared ways in multipolygons vs. regular polygons" off-list for some time, and I've always known this trend towards "shared ways" would deeply affect a large import I keep updated in my county. I believe this topic has made other OSM importers/maintainers of mostly- or exclusively-polygon data wonder what the best course of action is as OSM evolves to "shared ways" becoming more and more common. I hope it has helped a better consensus to emerge – it feels like it is doing so locally. What is emerging (at least here, between me and Gleb) is that there will come a point in either initial/original imports that are largely or exclusively polygon-only when it simple becomes time to "bite the bullet" and do the initial work to convert these to multipolygon as the trend towards "shared ways" grows. Yes, that is lots of work up front, but I believe in advance that it will be worth it in the editing time/efforts saved in the future as Gleb and Kevin have pointed out its many editing benefits. (I agree it is easier to maintain such "edges," boundaries especially, including landuse, which are "shared ways" as multipolygons allow us to do. EXCEPT in large, existing imports!). > Meanwhile, do I understand that my initial understanding of strong consensus > against multipolygons in the USA overall was wrong reading? First few emails > in the thread made me think so. Gleb, it was a sort of misunderstanding, and it doesn't seem important to lay blame on anybody in particular. What is important is that we seem to agree that while polygons certainly have their place and aren't going away, multipolygons are here to stay as well, and there is a distinct trend towards using them in a "shared way" context where it makes sense to do so. (The good examples that Kevin listed, likely more). Yes, as Frederik said, it can be a matter of taste which is better, as both are correct (one is harder to edit in one context, the other is harder to edit in another context), and so we should not be spending time "converting" from polygons to multipolygons. However, where it makes sense to use multipolygons in NEW data, let us enter them as such. > I'd like to continue working on coastline, and map all remaining SMRs and > later maintain them. I also want keep using multipolygons in any regular > edits. Are there any objections? If by "regular edits" you mean adding NEW data, no, I have no objection. If you want to "convert" existing polygons to multipolygons, yes, I (and others) object. Thank you once again for good, productive dialog! SteveA California _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
