Jeffrey Ollie replies:
On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 10:16 PM, stevea
<<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
Me collecting firewood makes this a forest producing timber. Full stop.
So my backyard is a forest now? My backyard has trees, and I
collect all of the downed branches and use them when I build fires
in my fire pit. I really don't see how it's useful to take the
definition of a "forest" to such an extreme.
This isn't extreme. Your backyard activity is consistent with the
definition of a forest: a land which is used for the production of
wood/lumber/timber/firewood/pulp/et cetera. Even if this is just you
or me picking up twigs and branches for a modest fire, whether your
backyard (which IS your backyard, you are USING it as a forest if you
do so) or our National Forests.
Anybody who wonders why I act like such a stickler about this hews to
the maxim of "nobody likes it when someone takes something away from
you" (especially when, as usual, they have no right to do so). So, a
brief story:
Recently, an OSM volunteer in Washington state changed many
California State Parks from leisure=park to leisure=nature_reserve.
As the latter is a much "higher" classification (more protection,
usually less public access or usage), this felt like a distinct
"taking" (in the US Constitution 5th Amendment sense of the word):
even if it's "just" OSM tagging, somebody was taking away my
enjoyment to recreate in my park by tagging it something more
restrictive. For a short time, we agreed to disagree, but eventually
he relented and either changed these tags back to park or he let me
do this, and he stopped further making such changes.
While not exactly the same with "landuse=forest" being deprecated on
USFS polygons, the analogy holds: taking away designation of this
polygon as having a land use of forest feels like somebody is saying
"you can't collect firewood here any longer." Except, I CAN collect
firewood in National Forests (unless otherwise prohibited, something
I fail to see anybody bolster with any evidence to the contrary).
While minor, and I agree, seeming like a small technicality, this
feels like a "taking" (away from me, and all owners/users of our
National Forests) and hence, I've legitimately got something to say
about it.
Again, I agree that it is fully correct going forward to use
boundary=protected_area and protect_class=6 on these -- except that
schema doesn't render in mapnik/Standard. (IT SURE WOULD BE NICE IF
IT DID SOON!)
Then, there is the very large issue of landcover=* as a tag, and IT,
TOO, is not rendered in mapnik/Standard.
We press ahead on these topics, though I still see only minor
progress. And even a bit of "drubbing" (in the guise of "let's take
a majority vote").
Can we at least have the magical/silent/invisible process of updates
to mapnik rendering chime in and say "yes, talk-us, it would be good
if mapnik began to implement rendering of boundary=protect_class and
landcover=*?" Oh, those are not-especially-well-defined tags, hm,
that could prevent good rendering, as "the rules aren't fully
established," so how can we write a renderer that implements them?
Well, everybody, let's roll up our sleeves and do these. Otherwise,
we will keep having the landuse=forest-on-USFS-polygons discussion
over and over again forever. Or, I am all ears to listen to other
proposals that will allow distinct forward momentum.
SteveA
California
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