Administrative boundaries are generally not verifiable by ground surveying, and are not straightforward to edit. This causes information rot. What good is administrative boundary information that are not trustworthy? Moreover, they are freely[1] and easily available from an authoritative source. For all these reasons combined, I would favor them not being in OSM at all.
[1] At least in the case of the United States - except for periods of government shutdown. In other countries, like the Netherlands, there is no such easily accessible authoritative source for some boundary levels, in which case maintaining them in OSM makes more sense to me. On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 8:36 AM, Richard Welty <rwe...@averillpark.net> wrote: > the scope of this series of messages is strictly confined to two > related things: true admin borders which are tied to local government > in a strict sense (that is, there is an actual elected governmental > body) and CDPs which are lumped in as admin_level 8 even > though they do not have elected governments (in NYS, these > correspond roughly to Hamlets, which are long established > named places without governments.) > > another upstate NY mapper and i have been cleaning up borders > in NY. it's been a long going and often tedious effort, and in > the process i've seen a lot of things. a bunch of discrete topics > follow in separate email messages so that we can focus on each > issue... > > richard > > > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us > -- Martijn van Exel http://oegeo.wordpress.com/ http://openstreetmap.us/ _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
