Drop rendering of admin borders

[matthijsmelissen]

This issue has been moved from trac because it is not clear whether it should be implemented or not.

Look at this for instance.

You may see violet ways messing up the map. [...] I think this sort of data has its purpose but not in the basic map. If you walk through the landscape and cross an administrative border and you get your eyeview off the screen and look around - will you see it? No, it's an abstract information. Instead you will miss the track that could take you to your destination and which happens to share its nodes with the admin border and thus is invisible (as can be seen here)

Simply said: This kind of stuff should be placed in a special layer (overlays) IMHO. Or not rendered at all. The map with these violet lines is confusing. And last but not least it's not nice.

[matthijsmelissen]

I sort of agree. The admin borders are really easy to confuse for tracks, especially for people not familiar with our style. And in some zoomlevels/some areas, they are really dominating. But of course admin borders do have their merits.

Other example where is it hard to tell what is road and what is admin border.

What do others think?

[matthijsmelissen]

See also https://trac.openstreetmap.org/ticket/3588

[Rovastar]

I think they are a ugly and confusing but I do sort of want to know where these are admin boundaries are.

I remember chatting with @gravitystorm at an OSM pub meet about this and the confusion people have about all the different dashed lines we have a dozens of them. :) and I am not sure anyone actually knows all of them.
Non OSMer "So can lets follow the map and walk down there?"
OSMer "actually no, that dashed purple line is not a pathway......"
[And it's increasing (track and tracktype is null)]

I am not sure of a suitable solution for this as they are useful but we cannot display everything.

[23cpo]

The OSM-map is not only for users. As a mapper I need to see the boundaries on the map. This is necessary for validating boundaries/find wrong boundaries/...

Boundaries are a very important thing for navigation, geocoding, ... and should stay visible for the mappers. If someone doesn't like the actual boundary styling he should propose a better rendering.

[matkoniecz]

Admin borders are confusing for first minute or two - but it is not hard to guess meaning. Also, at least I use them (default OSM turns out to be the best tool for checking low level boundaries).

[HolgerJeromin]

I really like the "new" label placement of the border, so please keep them visible.

[daganzdaanda]

I think admin boundaries are a very necessary thing in a multi-purpose map.
One could argue about the colour or style of the borders, maybe levels 8 and more could be less prominent. But I'm fine with what we have, especially the label placement that Holger mentioned. That has really turned out well.

[dieterdreist]

2014-06-10 21:07 GMT+02:00 schropps notifications@github.com:

Boundaries are a very important thing for navigation, geocoding, ... and
should stay visible for the mappers. If someone doesn't like the actual
boundary styling he should propose a better rendering.

+1, keep them but modify the style if a better suggestion is available

[vincentdephily]

See also #622 which seems to ask for the exact opposite of this issue.

I'm all for keeping them, but I agree that they are too prominent in many cases.

• At high zooms, perhaps the simplest thing to do is to render them underneath everything else.
• Make admin_levels easyer to distinguish, right now at high zoom it's very hard to see if I reached the county border or a lesser border (Render admin borders earlier/more prominent #622 vaguely mentions that)
• Change zoom levels at which a given admin_level starts appearing (Render admin borders earlier/more prominent #622 deals with that)
• Render names earlyer / more often (right now it takes me ages to find in which boundary I am, as I often want to)

[daganzdaanda]

Could these issues be merged somehow? I don't think they are about opposite things, its just that borders may have a problem at both ends of the zoom spectrum.

Yes, making the various levels on high zooms more distinguished sounds good.
On z4+5, I wouldn't make admin_level=2 more prominent, but make the lower levels less prominent.
On z6, level 2 should be stronger, level 4 is OK.
I'm fine with the borders on z7.
At z8, level 4 borders could be a tiny bit thicker IMHO.
At z9, both level 2 and 4 could be a little bit thicker.
z10 has prominent level2 borders (which are OK with me), but level4 borders disappear completely.
z11 is OK to me.
z12 to15, I'm OK with the lines, but I would like to see more names (as vincent said).
On even higher zooms, level 2 boundaries could be wider again.

My feeling is, a border between countries should be pretty wide, maybe twice the width of a tertiary road, but may be pretty pale except for the fine center line.
Borders between admin_level=4 states should still be wider than a road, but even paler.

The smaller admin_levels need to be looked at, too. Maybe the same rule of thumb could work: make them wider than a small street / track, but really pale.

[pnorman]

Could these issues be merged somehow?

No, not able to do that.

However, I'm going to close this, as the general view is keep admin boundaries, although change the rendering.