PS, Sherwood Park is weird in a way the map shouldn't have to care about. :)

Right, but we should be mapping to OSM rules, no? That way, cities etc. would have appropriate prominence relative to each other. To heck with legal distinctions; we're making a map, not a legal document.

If Spruce Grove is a city and so is Edmonton, is it correct for a map to display Spruce Grove in big letters but not Edmonton, because they're equally prominent and would otherwise overlap?

As I recall, the wiki guidance is all about population size...

I rarely do tracktype myself because it can be hard to discern correctly if you're working from imagery, and it really slows down mapping. But maybe I should try...

Sorry, off-topic for this changeset. If there's more discussion, maybe we can move it to the forum? Cheers.

It's debatable. There's been a recent discussion on the subject here: https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=62581

In Alberta, I map most forestry roads as unclassified, with "significant" roads (longer distance, many tributaries) as tertiary, and that seems both logical and wiki-compatible.

Correction: near Creston. I'm sure I typed a new changeset comment; where'd it go?

Hi Meliora.

I see you've been very busy mapping in BC (yay!), but also importing CanVec which makes me very nervous.

From personal experience, I know that any watercourse in BC that's
more than a few kilometers (2 or 3) from its headwaters, is definitely too big to jump across, so doesn't fit the OSM definition of "stream". River would be more appropriate in almost all cases.

It's a very Canadian understatement that many of these have "Creek" in the official name, even for giant rivers that a horse would hesitate to ford.

Hi. landuse=forest seems appropriate for broad areas clearly used for tree farming. osm.wiki/Tag:landuse%3Dforest

I do a lot of woodland mapping in Alberta, and personally, can't be bothered to mark each clearcut separately. Within months, each clearcut has new trees planted, and the forest starts to grow back.

I think it's perfectly acceptable to simply mark the whole forest as landuse=forest and move on to something else. Plenty to do.

But it's clear to me, "Industrial" is wrong for this, per the wiki. osm.wiki/Key:industrial

My two bits. :)

Your judgment sounds good; I'll let it slide.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

I'd forgotten about the lack of category for 200-1000. But you think there are more than 200 people even on a summer weekend? (I'll admit, it's been a while since I glanced at the satellite view.)

I always follow the wiki recommendations rather than politicians' locally distorted ideas, eg pipsqueak "cities" (coughChestermerecough) that don't deserve a great big label. Makes for better consistency worldwide.

But, your call. I don't want to parachute in and mess things up; I usually focus on other things.

Cheers,
Tom / VP

This is a "city" only in the minds of politicians. OSM has its own criteria.

Hi hoserab.

The wiki suggests village for between "1,000 and 10,000 inhabitants". This looks smaller, perhaps a hamlet.

(The whole province, maybe whole country, is messed up in this area, thanks to an old import. If I'm really bored some day I may try to tackle that...)

Hi. What are you trying to do here?

You added a simple node with no tags. This will have no effect. There's already something mapped at this location which is in the Blackfoot PRA. But the changeset name suggests you're trying to edit the Lake Louise area.

Glad to help. Happy mapping. :)

PS, the relation technique I mentioned, island as "hole" in lake, also works for things like: lake as hole in forest (keeps trees out of water), parking lots etc. as holes in forest (same idea). Not applicable right here as little forest is mapped, but I've been adding lots of forest elsewhere, with holes as needed.

https://simon04.dev.openstreetmap.org/whodidit/ is great for watching an area you're interested in, and you can subscribe to an RSS feed notification if anybody touches it. If somebody makes a big mess, you can "revert" (JOSM has a plugin for that, dunno about Potlatch), but usually these comments are a good place to start; contact the author.

Cheers,
VP

Hi. I don't know Potlatch, so can only speak generally. (BTW, try JOSM some time, big learning curve but big payoff.)

Adding an island to a lake means you need to create a relation, type=multipolygon, natural=water, water=lake, name=etc, add the shoreline (stripped of its tags, move them to the relation) as an outer member, then add the island outline as an inner member. This makes the island a "hole" in the lake, no blue. Then tag the island with natural=wood if you like.
Natural=coastline isn't right for this, and place=islet doesn't hurt but I'm a bit vague on that. (Cont...)

All looks good there. "Track" does seem most appropriate for quad trails, maybe "path" if just a bike trail, one tire track or not even that. Wiki is a bit vague on the dividing line. But in this area it all seems quaddable (or 4x4able), so track seems right.

And I use "unclassified" for roads-to-nowhere-special, and just the occasional "tertiary" for through roads to farther away, or somehow otherwise significant.

I was just up this way, spent a night random-camped beside one of the tracks you added. It was nice to find a spot on a Saturday night; the regular campgrounds were full.

Hi boarder.

While debugging the disappearance of a lake I mapped, I noticed you've been using landuse=basin for natural water bodies. The wiki at osm.wiki/Tag:landuse=basin?uselang=en-US suggests that's for artificial basins, eg man-made.

I've changed landuse=basin to natural=water in this area. I didn't add water=lake or water=pond etc, as that part appears to be optional.

I see lots of trails in this area now; that looks to be mostly your work. Good job.

Happy mapping,
VP

Hi FS99A.

1. It's not necessary to mark a trail junction like this; it's obvious from a glance at the map that this is a junction.

2. Simply putting a name tag on a node of a way doesn't cause any map (that I know of) to display the name.

3. "Trail junction" isn't a name, it's a description. Think of it this way: if there was a sign, it wouldn't say "Trail junction".

Thank you for your interest in Ministik. I keep an eye on it, as I've done virtually all the mapping here.

Looks perfectly reasonable to me. You added leisure=nature_reserve, which seems perfectly logical for this kind of park.

(In case anybody was to chime in about "tagging for the renderer". I wouldn't consider this to be an example.)