U diskusiji na osm-hr telegram grupi (Telegram: Contact @osmhr) smo primjetili probleme sa označavanjem administrativnih granica.
Nekada davno (2009) se za županije u Hrvatskoj koristio admin_level=4 (talk-hr link) a onda smo 2012-te to dogovorili da će biti admin_level=6 (v. talk-hr i trac za rationale).
Prema dogovoru na telegramu to ćemo vratiti nazad, i napisati korisniku da se konzultira s HR community-em prvo prije takvih izmjena. Ovo pišem da ostane dokumentirano, i da pozovem korisnika na razgovor ovdje ako smatra da su izmjene potrebne.
Hi! In my opinion, admin_levels for Croatian counties should be changed from 6 to 4 because they would be in line with most other countries’ first-level administrative divisions in Europe and the world, and they would be clearly seen from multiple zooming levels. The current situation seems to make Croatia unfairly inferior to other countries. After my edit got reverted (and of course before I did my edits to Croatia), Croatia has no subdivisions at higher admin_levels in OSM. And also, the counties are the subdivisions of Croatia that have codes in ISO 3166-2, so that also advocates moving them to admin_level 4.
I haven’t found anything on the Openstreetmap Wiki that says we should use admin_level=4. Please give us a link if there is a similar rule.
And also, the counties are the subdivisions of Croatia that have codes in ISO 3166-2, so that also advocates moving them to admin_level 4.
I can’t find the rule that subdivisions with ISO 3166-2 codes need to have admin_level<6.
We converted from 4 to 6 because our first subdivision is called “county” in English so we used place=county for our county names mapped as nodes. When we had admin_level=6, Nominatim didn’t recognize that those two were connected because admin_level=4 is seen as county level. Maybe that rule doesn’t make sense, but we as a community decided to go with it, as you can see from the links above.
That was your problem, you didn’t consult the local community before changing pretty crucial data unilaterally. But now is your chance to give us a good reason to do so.
Agreed, such changes really should always be first discussed first with appropriate communities. Wiki on Mechanical Edits contains further instructions on doing such major changes.
But now is your chance to give us a good reason to do so.
So far I see following regarding using admin_level=4 for županije (counties):
pro: most other countries use 4 for province/region
contra: problem with nominatim which identifies 4 as state, and not as county, leading to problems mentioned in that trac ticket.
@Miro_Heinonen do you perhaps have information how other countries handle such problem; or maybe if the issue has been resolved in the meantime? Or some other information / arguments pro&contra each of the solutions? Thanks!
First-level subdivisions are named “counties” also in Lithuania, Norway, Romania and Sweden, and they are all in admin_level 4. I don’t know how they handled this “problem”.
I just noticed that the last few days @Miro_Heinonen has been changing the admin levels of other countries aswell on the wiki without consultation from the local communities.
They changed the admin levels of Greece in OSM aswell, which has now been reverted, and that’s how I found it out.
It looks like they do it for “rendering purposes”, based on what it is written here and on their discussion page on wiki.
Well, if you take a look at the Template:Admin_level, you will see that all but smallest countries have their first-level divisions at admin_level=4. Normally, their local names vary, but they are usually called provinces, states or districts in English translations. Miro has a point that Croatia is the odd one out. Other large-ish countries which don’t follow suit include Latvia, Montenegro and Slovenia, but they are all unitary, and municipalities/cities are the first level below country. But županije are proper first-level units of significant size and importance, with government, so should really be placed higher up to match, like, Swedish Läns. On the other hand, counties of Hungary have similar function and history like those of Croatia, yet they are at admin_level=6, with some exotic NUTS regions occupying levels 4 and 5…
I skimmed over the original hr-talk discussion, and I’m not sure I fully understand the rationale for moving from 4 to 6; it sounds like “tagging for Nominatim” to me. It’s possible that back in 2012 there weren’t even complete boundary relations and Nominatim was doing its typical buggy heuristic mumbo-jumbo, but I don’t see the real reason to stick with that decision.
It’s a bit insane because our Dear Leader started to revert some changes to medieval times so they rearranged counties to districts, but “forgot” to actually finish it properly, so we have both, plus various level of “official” regions. It’s a choice of which of our fingers shall we bite…
Koliko vidim po tom trac ticketu, 2012 je Nominatim defaultao da je 6“county” (a za 4 je vraćao “state”) i većina zemalja je imala tako, ali to se odonda izgleda promijenilo koliko vidim (bio je neki bug #4247 kojeg su pradavno riješili).
@Janjko, ti si to inicijalno prijavljivao problem, da li ti se čini da bi to sad trebalo raditi sa admin_level=4 za županije?
Kad se već dižu županije, dignite i gradove i općine na barem level 6. Nema smisla imati županije na 4 a općine na 7. Gradovi i općine su drugi red administrativne podjele u RH, a i nisu sasvim beznačajne.
