Dear user SHARCRASH,

on 31st October I sent you a message with the following content:

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Dear SHARCRASH,

I am writing to you in my capacity as a member of OSMF’s Data Working Group (DWG).

We are continuing to hear complaints about some of your mapping. You have explained your actions to several members of DWG and we thank you for taking the time to do that. However, we must today ask you to:

• Stop creating multipolygons with several outer rings where it would be totally possible to represent the individual areas as single polygons, as they have no intrinsic connection. Example:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6474452#map=14/49.6266/5.9174

This should be 15 individual natural=wood areas mapped - usually - as closed ways, not a multipolygon like the one you created. These 15 areas have nothing in common except that they’re all wood. Putting them into a multipolygon means that they are somehow a common wood but they are not. This mapping is not only a nuisance to other mappers, it is plain wrong.

There are other examples like this:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6474453#map=16/49.6365/5.9115

Don’t do that, it is wrong. Such mapping is only ok if the objects thus combined have a shared property over and above “this is farmland”. For example, if you have a wood called “Darkwood” and it has several patches it might be ok to combine all those in one multipolygon.

• Stop creating multipolygons where the outer rings contain an excssive number of elements. For example, don’t do something like this:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/5465453#map=17/49.54068/5.87654

or this:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/5391168#map=14/49.5306/5.8977

Using line segments that represent a shared boundary between two polygons as “outer” pieces is not uncommon but it should be reserved to cases where the shared boundary is large enough to warrant this. As a rule of thumb, use this procedure only where the boundary shared by two neighbouring polygons (or by a polygon and a way) is at least 1km long.

*Generally try to use multipolygons only where there’s an important reason to do it. Try to use simple closed ways wherever that results in a simpler map.

To avoid misunderstandings:

• This is not an request for discussion. We have read your messages but we ask you nonetheless to moderate your multipolygon editing. We will not discuss this matter with you. If you want to talk about multipolygon editing and your approach to it, feel free to discuss that on a suitable mailing list, e.g. “tagging” or “talk”. You may quote this message there but if you do, please quote it entirely.

• These rules are not general rules; we just ask you to follow them.

• These rules do not cover all editing that causes problems for your fellow mappers, they just try to capture the most pressing problems in an easy to follow guideline. If you find yourself making very complex edits that other, less experienced or less intelligent mappers will have difficulties working with, re-think what you’re doing and try to find a simpler way.

Thank you for your understanding.

Frederik Ramm aka woodpeck
OSMF Data Working Group

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Sadly, you have not changed your editing; just a few hours ago, you created

https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6715330

which is another collection of precisely the type we asked you not to build because they don’t make sense.

You are contributing a lot of good data to OpenStreetMap and we are grateful for that. But edits like this one only create work for others who have to bring the map in line with common standards, or worst case they will chase away mappers who are less able than you to work with relations.

I am blocking your account for 24 hours to make it clear that this is not a request that you can choose to ignore. You will be free to edit again after 24 hours but please play with the rest of us, not against us.

Thank you
Frederik Ramm
OSMF Data Working Group