Talk:United States/Boundaries

Capitalization

I reverted edits such as 1488696 in order to apply title case consistently to headings on the page and fix incoming links. I don't understand why it's so important to capitalize the words "territory" or "commonwealth" when they refer to the concept in general as opposed to a specific entity. Notice, for example, how w:Territories of the United States lowercases the word many times, for example: "The United States currently has sixteen territories." This article is not a legal document or piece of legislation. Ultimately, the question of whether to capitalize such words is hardly consequential, but that's why I think we should err on the side of writing for laypeople. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 08:05, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

New Orleans wards

I removed this text:

In cities which contain both wards and neighborhoods (as does New Orleans), it may make sense to tag the wards admin_level=9 and the neighborhoods admin_level=10, to preserve this hierarchy. New Orleans might chime in and suggest that wards are administrative and neighborhoods are not; there is little or no consensus here.

It's true that New Orleans has both wards and neighborhoods. In fact, there are both the less formal, amorphous kind of neighborhood that a lot of cities have, as well as the formally defined "neighborhoods" primarily used by the City Planning Commission. There are significant differences between the two sets of neighborhoods. As far as I can tell, the former shouldn't be mapped with boundary relations, and the latter are no more administrative boundaries than the NOPD precincts or New Orleans City Council districts – none of which line up, by the way.

Moreover, none of these things are mapped in OSM anyways. The article's stated purpose is to describe the database as it is. As a major contributor to OSM's coverage of New Orleans, let me go out on a limb and say the local community isn't going to map wards and neighborhoods as described above. But if anyone feels strongly that they should be mapped that way, there are other venues such as United States admin level, the talk-us mailing list, and OpenStreetMap itself. Put down the wiki and start mapping!

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 08:26, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Minh, to say "put down the wiki and start mapping" is disingenuous at best, and mean-spirited and callous at worst. Why would you suggest to another volunteer to "put down the wiki" when you yourself picked up the mantle of wiki-writing with this very article in response to another article with largely the same content? Ah, with your contradictory stated purposes to "not discuss novel tagging proposals...(but rather) ignore them in order to focus on how to tag new features as they come up." (See below). — Stevea (talk) 20:18, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Introductory text

I find it contradictory that the introductory text states:

"this article does not discuss novel tagging proposals...(it) ignores them in order to focus on how to tag new features as they come up."

Huh? Perhaps clarification is needed to differentiate between "novel tagging proposals" and "how to tag new features," as these seem either exactly the same or quite similar.

And, if (as stated above) it is true that this article "describe(s) the database as it is," how/why is it that its stated purpose in the intro text is "how to tag new features?" I find this highly confusing.

— Stevea (talk) 20:18, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Please delete Regions COG from Connecticut 5 and CDP from Connecticut 10

See [1] for reasoning. Stevea (talk) 02:37, 3 May 2020 (UTC)