Ahh, I just noticed the new relation that this edit created - relation/19106952 - that sorts it out ... sorry for the bother

Oops, this edit broke the Way record for Santa Ynez - way/33180899 - it looks like the whole northern section was chopped off ... for a reference of what it looked like before, you can see https://citystrides.com/cities/225514

Did you delete the boundary of Nekoma on accident?

Did you intend to delete Grant Creek?
relation/4249539
https://citystrides.com/cities/13515

This change fully removed the relation for Tight Valley (relation/186865 ... you can see what it used to look like at https://citystrides.com/cities/20011).

Was that removal intentional?

Yeah, I've built out my own Overpass server to avoid over-loading theirs. I query by area, which (as I understand it) is based on relations (the OSM relation ID + 3600000000 gives me the Overpass area ID).
Apologies for keeping the conversation going, but I still don't see a way around using a relation. I also don't see how it can be a bad thing, if (in my experience) every other city I've ever seen in OSM is a relation.

(text can be hard, I'm genuinely interested in getting this right - not trying to be argumentative)

In my experience so far (which is fairly limited, so perhaps I'm misunderstanding something), cities around the world exist as a relation with an admin level value.
Countries are (consistently, from what I've seen) at admin level 2, with their major States/Provinces/Prefectures/Regions usually existing at admin level 4 (this varies quite a bit, from what I've seen), and their cities usually existing at admin level 8 (also varies quite a bit; this city being a good example, at admin level 10).
I'd love to understand your perspective, if you have seen cities without an admin level.

I'm unsure how to comprehend this (I'm new to many OSM details). It doesn't _seem_ to align with what I've seen in OSM so far.
I've got a project where I'm collecting Streets (with their Nodes) within Cities. In my experience so far, a "City" is generally defined as a relation at admin level 8 (it varies from region to region; where regions are _usually_ at admin level 4, but those also vary across Countries - which I've seen consistently exist at admin level 2).
With - so far - 100% consistency, every city I've come across in OSM exists as a relation.
I'm probably misunderstanding something, so hopefully sharing my point of view helps you explain your point in a way that I'll understand it.

Thank you! I understand that I should be making edits as localized as possible, now.

I also see that I _did_ change the wrong Glastonbury. I have since changed that back to the admin level 7 that it was before I "helped". :-)

Apologies, but I don't know what you mean by "before you change the area."