My knowledge is limited to NSW as that is the state in which I have previously made enquiries. Verbal descriptions of administrative boundaries have not been used in recent years. Boundaries are now defined geospatially, with the NSW Department of Community Services being responsible for producing the official maps. It is my understanding that the DCS NSW maps are as authoritative as can be obtained (except for the surveyors' charts from which the DCS maps are derived). I think the government pays a royalty to surveyors in order to be able to use the surveyors' data in government maps and licence others to use these maps. DCS NSW certainly does not snap the boundaries to nearby features.
I'm uncertain about the terms of use of the government data but, generally, when reproducing another person or organisation's resources (images, text etc) with permission, one is required not to distort that resource so as to not embarrass the donor. Where a source such as the NSW Government has given permission to use its data in OSM, I feel we have an obligation to use it correctly. It would be wrong to show inaccurate boundaries and attribute them to the Government source. As the person who initiated obtaining access to the NSW data a few years ago, I feel particularly embarrassed that we might mis-use it. The only reason I can see for snapping administrative boundaries to nearby natural features is for convenience - but I see it as convenience at the expense of accuracy. I will abide by any collective decision of mapping colleagues but I believe that if we are going to do something, we should do it properly and, in OSM, that would mean as accurately as we can manage - even if it is inconvenient and untidy. On Tue, 28 Mar 2023, at 9:42 PM, Andrew Harvey wrote: > Personally I'd prefer to snap them, it makes it easier for us to > maintain, better for data consumers, and overall cleaner data. > > I speculate these departmental GIS teams are creating the boundaries > from their own coastline datasets anyway, so why not just have them > match OSM's coastline? > > I think it's unlikely these GIS representations are the absolute set in > stone authority, if they rebuild their GIS data with newer coastline > data their boundary geometry will change. > > I agree with Frederik here, if someone wants the boundaries exactly as > they appear in the government published dataset they should go there > and not expect OSM to be exactly the same. They shouldn't be > untouchable objects in OSM, we can hold a different representation of > the boundary to the department's GIS dataset that doesn't make OSM > wrong. > > I think you'll find exactly what Frederik says, that the moment you > step foot on the land out of the water you'll be deemed in the national > park for most purposes, except particular cases where the boundaries > does extend out in the water. > _______________________________________________ > Talk-au mailing list > Talk-au@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
