On Fri, Jan 18, 2019 at 2:49 PM Markus <selfishseaho...@gmail.com> wrote: > Regarding areas with fuzzy boundaries, i could imagine a new kind of > relation that contains one multipolygon relation for the part of area > that certainly belongs to the area feature ('minimal area') and one > multipolygon relation for the fuzzy area (= 'maximal area' - 'minimal > area'). However, this is not part of this proposal.
We deal with indefinite objects more often than some people are comfortable with. (I've mentioned previously that my state has such things as county lines that are in part unsurveyed!) Rather than a new relation type, I think it would be simpler to tag the indefinite part of the boundary of whatever area feature with a key like "indefinite=yes". An indefinite boundary will normally have no reason to have tags of its own other than this one - because it would need to be a 'real' feature in order to have most of them be meaningful. It would ordinarily be there only to close a multipolygon topologically, and the tags of the multipolygon of which it's an inner or outer way would ordinarily be the only other information pertaining to it. If we try to fix "maximal" and "minimal" area, we'll simply run into more haggling- because the maximum and minimum do not have bright-line definitions, any more than the indefinite line does. We'll have interminable arguments over what land might and might not be considered part of a peninsula. I'd like to nip that in the bud by simply declaring that any choice is arbitrary, and that the drawing of an arbitrary boundary of an area feature should be informed in part by what the locals think. Is Wareham, Massachusetts on Cape Cod? I have no idea, but I bet that the locals have a rough consensus - and if they don't, that they'd at least be unsurprised if a mapper were to choose the Cape Cod Canal or the Plymouth County line as the cutoff with an 'indefinite' indication. Simply having the tagging allow for an 'indefinite line', I think, could be a near-universal solution to the fact that bays, peninsulas, channels, isthmuses, lakes with broad inlets/outlets, rivers with broad mouths, administrative regions with unsurveyed boundaries, mountain ranges, etc. all are area features that have a distinct shape, except for the fact that part of their margin may be indefinite. Try as we might to make them go away, there are objects, observable and named in the real world, that are areas, part of whose boundaries are indefinite. Saying that such things can be only point features is shortsighted. I support the 'peninsula' proposal, with the caveat that the Wiki should indicate that large (we need guidance on just how large) peninsulas should not yet be mapped, because of the technical problems in enormous relations. If Arabia, Malaya, Kamchatka, Gaspé or Delmarva are likely to choke the servers, then we need at least temporarily to exclude them - just as we exclude the Gulf of Bothnia or the Sea of Cortez. I'm certainly willing to concede that the technical limitation needs to be respected - without ruling out the idea that someday it may be relaxed or eliminated. _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging