Maybe we need to split "small" and "large" fuzzy areas into different
concepts. Or at least different discussions, as they are quite different
in terms of how they affect the map and what needs they fulfill.
I do see a risk of edit wars of large fuzzy areas that make great impact
on overview maps. I already thought we had that on country borders in
conflict areas and such, so maybe we already have routines to deal with
that? If we can't introduce features due to edit war risk, maybe the
problem is not the feature as such, but how we can handle edit wars?
Edit wars is completely new to me though, so I don't know much about
this problem area or how much we normally let it affect our features.
I don't think these large fuzzy areas need to have very large amount of
nodes by the way (they just lay on top, as they are defined as fuzzy
it's unnecessary to specify lots of nodes), but they need to cover a
large geographical area. You couldn't really edit them in JOSM or iD
normally I think, but I don't think "normal" mappers would need to
either. Having them in an external database and not integrate with the
normal tools would be ok, and I guess that would also solve the edit war
issue too. I'd very much like it to be rendered in OSM-Carto at some
point though so we don't completely forget about it, but I would suspect
that there are technical difficulties to do that with the current
platform so we could skip that for now.
However, fuzzy areas needed for rural and outdoor maps cover a wetland,
a piece of forest, a small plateau, a slope of a mountain, a valley, a
peninsula in a lake etc, those are unlikely to be a problem in terms of
edit wars. They are also small enough to be accessible for edit in JOSM
and iD today, and as I often mention already exists and renders in the
form of bays and straits, which I actually need to use quite often as we
have these in our lakes of different sizes and coverage, meaning that
point naming without size differentiation doesn't work.
Having a "fuzzy tag" I think is a good idea, although we could also do
it as a flat structure with a list of tags that are defined as being
fuzzy. Anything that works :-).
If there is large opposition from the people that make the renderers
most of us use against these type of features I don't think we have much
chance of success though. I think it's hard to get crowd-sourcing going
if there is no renderer at all supporting it.
/Anders
On 2020-12-21 17:16, Paul Allen wrote:
On Mon, 21 Dec 2020 at 15:47, Brian M. Sperlongano
<zelonew...@gmail.com> wrote:
The current data model works just fine for fuzzy areas: it requires a
polygon combined with tagging that indicates that the area is "fuzzy".
Since the current data model allows both polygons and tags, fuzzy
areas could be mapped just fine from a technical standpoint.
I assume that there is a technical limitation on the number of nodes in
such a
polygon. A limitation that may apply to any or all of editors,
database tables
and renderers. There may be some technical workarounds, there may not
be.
"Whether we want fuzzy areas"
To an extent, everything we map is fuzzy, in that there is always
imprecision.
Aerial imagery may be offset. Roads may pass through woods giving
little or
no visual indication. GPS traces have errors and require many traces
to
achieve good precision. Everything we map is fuzzy in the sense that
it
is imprecise but we live with that and understand that the map is an
approximation that we may be able to improve upon at a subsequent date.
The dislike of fuzziness here appears to centre around verifiability.
We don't want edit wars over the extent of a boundary for which
no definitive answer can ever be given. We want rigidly defined
areas of doubt and uncertainty. I'm not sure that a fuzzy tag
will resolve that problem. The precise boundary of a wetland
doesn't matter too much and a few tens of metres either way
isn't a problem; when it comes to "The Alps" that is a different
matter. Simply tagging an area as fuzzy doesn't mean another
mapper won't disagree with your polygon and edit it.
The statement that fuzzy polygons is "damaging" is an argument not
based in fact. It is not damaging to me to have building outlines,
which I do not care about. I can simply ignore them. Likewise, fuzzy
areas cause no damage to people that do not care about fuzzy areas,
provided that there is tagging that distinguishes them from non-fuzzy
areas.
The problem is the edit wars that may arise. Not a technical issue but
a
behavioural one.
Further, since we have free tagging, there is nothing preventing
mappers (especially ones not party to these conversations) from adding
additional fuzzy areas to the database, mapped with some invented
scheme, and potentially even creating data consumers to consume such
invented tagging. Many tagging schemes in OSM have arisen in this
manner.
And there is the deeper problem. People will do it anyway. And
possibly have
their additions reverted by the DWG. Repeatedly. In the short term,
that may
work. In the longer term, "any tag you want" may win. You can't turn
back
the tide but, with barriers you can divert it.
If we don't have fuzzy areas, people will abuse place=locality and
other
tags to get labels rendered. If we do have fuzzy areas then renderers
can calculate label placement, label size, and which zoom levels the
label appears at. Fuzzy areas also mean we have meaningful tagging
rather than abused tagging, which makes searching for such areas
simpler.
--
Paul
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