Why shouldn't parcels be imported?

I noticed King County has some pretty good parcel data and that a lot of homes there don’t have addresses yet. I was about to start a discussion about an automated change to import addresses or add addresses for existing unaddressed homes until I saw the (subtle) link to Import/Past_Problems on Import/Guidelines on Automated_Edits_code_of_conduct, which warns against parcel data with these points:

  • “Parcels change. A major task […] is keeping the parcel layer up to date.” The fact that parcels are updated routinely is a good thing no? Just means we’ll use the most current addresses for any homes currently without addresses.
  • “Parcels are not ‘surveyable’.” But this doesn’t apply if you only import addresses instead of parcel borders.
  • “Parcels aren’t useful on a map. When you are going somewhere you go to an address not a parcel.” Yeah the problem is that a ton of homes currently don’t have an address at all.
  • “sometimes a parcel has one address, sometimes hundreds” I’d expect most apartments to be already tagged with an address given how many people live there and how large they are so this should be safe.
  • “Explanation of why it shouldn’t be imported.” This seems to be a placeholder?

Any better arguments against a careful address import from parcel data, or should I try to continue with getting permission, making plans, getting consensus on them, and editing?

To clarify, are you looking to import addresses as points (or to attach them to buildings), or parcels as in boundaries of real estate property parcels? A bunch of objections you quote seem to relate to the latter, and that’s also what Parcel - OpenStreetMap Wiki talks about. Tag:place=plot - OpenStreetMap Wiki is the tag for property boundaries and comes with a lot of warnings that seem pretty sensible to me.

If you call it “importing addresses” does that look better?

Planning to import addresses as points (or attaching them to buildings), but the source of the addresses would be parcel bounds.

Standard warnings make more sense now that I know about plot, and sounds like I can move forward with the standard approval process. Thanks!

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