I wanted to add a linestring for the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California with asked 29 Sep '22, 18:58  kueda edited 30 Sep '22, 05:24 |
One Answer:
I would recommend against adding large features like that, especially when they have fuzzy boundaries like a "mountain range". You will generally have disputes at the edges whether a place is "within" or just "near" the mountain range, which is problematic from OSM's "verifiability" point of view. answered 29 Sep '22, 19:02  Frederik Ramm ♦ |
That's partly why I wanted to add this as a linestring and not a polygon: a polygon will invite more argument about the exact boundaries of a vague geographic concept. I'm new to OSM editing so I'm just now learning about verifiability in OSM. If I only add linestrings that follow the path of a label on a USGS DRG, does that qualify as "verifiable"? Other editors can look at that authoritative source, so it's verifiable in that it's present on another map, though it's not verifiable on the ground, necessarily.
Anyway, that's getting at whether I should do this, which I appreciate, but my question concerned how I do this.
You should really learn more about the OSM data model, as there is no
linestringnorpolygonin OSM.Well there is, effectively - there are features that "anyone creating or consuming OSM data would assume is an area" and other features that "anyone creating or consuming OSM data would assume is a line (perhaps a closed one)". It's true that there are edge cases (hedge and raceway are examples that have changed or caused issues in the past), but you can't talk about the "OSM data model" without thinking about "how people interpret that data".