Hi all,
I’d like to point out a map rendering issue which I think affects the overall usefulness of OSM.
Some municipalities (admin level 6-8) in Italy are a collection of scattered villages and hamlets (100-200 inhabitants as per the definition on https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:place)) having their own distinct names. The name of the main municipality is, however, different from those of its villages and hamlets and while it appears as an admin unit with its boundary and label, HOWEVER the name label does not appear on the OSM map, whereas the label of the hamlet or village designated as a capital village/head village - that is where the town hall is located - appears on the map at any level of zooming, like for all the other villages and hamlets that are similar municipalities (admin level 6-8) made of one single village or with the head village having the same name of the admin unit.
As an example, the village of Fagnano Alto (admin level 6-8, https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=fagnano%20alto#map=13/42.2509/13.5848&layers=N)) is made of a number of hamlets and villages, but its name and label (https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4395508906) does not appear on the map. The head village is Vallelunga, which is pretty much unknown to anyone. Same for the nearby villages of Lucoli and Ocre - none of their names appear on the map.
When the OSM map is used as a background map on other websites, for instance the Italy’s National Earthquake Institute (INGV), this abovementioned information from the map is missing: while the website itself mentions the name of the village, the user cannot find it on the map at all. This is a fresh example (http://cnt.rm.ingv.it/event/22772041) of an earthquake recorded near the village of Lucoli: the INGV website shows the OSM map with a blue pin (epicentre of the earthquake) but when zooming in the name of ‘‘Lucoli’’, mentioned in the website as the closest municipality to where the epicentre is, is nowhere to be seen on the map.
The Italian Ordnance Survey (IGM), the Touring Club (a sort of Lonely Planet) and a few other national maps all shows these labels of villages, made of scattered hamlets and villages, with a label placed right above or nearby the head village which has its own name.
Can something similar be made in OSM, for instance making the label/node itself visible at the same level of other similar admin units, in order to improve the communication of this essential piece of information to users who search the map for this very information, without cluttering the map with other labels?
Many thanks