NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum

In many cases area objects that require land, for instance island in the sea, lake or river, have an additional tag place=island/islet, like here https://osm.org/go/YnCwtMF--?layers=D&way=12379111 . However, as in the link, we cannot find any islands in the sea. Is this editing practice acceptable?

asked 02 Sep '18, 21:48

sanser's gravatar image

sanser
695383955
accept rate: 5%

edited 03 Sep '18, 13:41

SK53's gravatar image

SK53 ♦
28.1k48268433


The island you are linking to and some other near it are not mapped correctly. Island in the sea have to be mapped with a natural=coastline around its perimeter (unlike islands in rivers or lakes which must not have this tag). In this case they are mapped with natural=wood. To map these correctly, put natural=coastline tags on the ways and add a multipolygon relation for natural=wood tag. Adding a place=island/islet is optional, many islands, especialy unnamed ones don't have it. Traditionally place=island/islet was often used on nodes to mark the place where a label would go, today it can be used also on ways or relations. But for ways it only makes sense really, if the way encloses the whole island. For larger islands this is probably not the case, as the coastline is split into multiple ways.

permanent link

answered 03 Sep '18, 08:58

Jochen%20Topf's gravatar image

Jochen Topf
5.2k55074
accept rate: 31%

Ah yes, quite right, Jochen. I never noticed the missing coastline. How would one go about setting up a relation to handle both natural=coastline and natural=wood? I have mapped many wooded islands and have always added the wooded area as a separate way.

(03 Sep '18, 10:03) AlaskaDave
1

For simple islets I just add a second way with coastline or wood as applicable sharing the nodes. I keep multipolygon relations solely for things which have holes or which will get too big. Basically the idea is that this approach is always more obvious in editors than a relation.

(03 Sep '18, 13:40) SK53 ♦

I can see several islands or islets in this vicinity, both with DigitalGlobe imagery and Google. There are several other tags on that way that don't make sense, for example, boat=yes, ship=permissive, waterway=river name=Orinoco, so my guess is that the mapper accidentally copied these tags onto the way describing the island but other than that, place=island and natural=wood appear to match reality.

permanent link

answered 03 Sep '18, 01:19

AlaskaDave's gravatar image

AlaskaDave
5.4k76107164
accept rate: 16%

edited 03 Sep '18, 01:20

Follow this question

By Email:

Once you sign in you will be able to subscribe for any updates here

By RSS:

Answers

Answers and Comments

Markdown Basics

  • *italic* or _italic_
  • **bold** or __bold__
  • link:[text](http://url.com/ "title")
  • image?![alt text](/path/img.jpg "title")
  • numbered list: 1. Foo 2. Bar
  • to add a line break simply add two spaces to where you would like the new line to be.
  • basic HTML tags are also supported

Question tags:

×930
×43
×26

question asked: 02 Sep '18, 21:48

question was seen: 1,827 times

last updated: 03 Sep '18, 13:41

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum