Something to note about water features!

[Nels]

Hey mappers! Just a quick note about water features and how we'd like to handle them:

Bodies of water can either be marked as a linear feature or a polygon feature. 

Please do not remove a polygon feature to mark it as a linear feature, and conversely, do not remove a linear feature to mark it as a polygon feature.

If the linear feature has already been marked you can always add an unnamed water polygon to better represent the dimensions of the linear feature.

Hopefully this will clear up some of the confusion concerning these features!

Thanks

-Nels

[Flash]

What timing, I was coming in here to ask precisely if I could do what you suggest; there is a creek that widens to ponds at several points and I was thinking of leaving it as a linear feature throughout its length and adding unnamed water polygons where it widens.  Thanks!

[eastwest]

Actually, this makes me think -- there are creeks around here with wide and narrow spots, and some of the wider spots have been mapped as polygons, but the linear features that flow in and out of them are disconnected -- so a creek on a map is really made up of a series of disconnected lines, which of course does not reflect reality. So here's the question -- can it (and you guys will have a implement this as a new feature, I know) be made so that rivers and "lakes" (or wide spots in rivers) are connected? Or, should we manually draw lines to connect them through the polygons?

[Geoffrey Perez]

Well, here's the help article on rivers:  http://support.google.com/mapmaker/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1098088 

Specifically, under Best Practices,

A linear river feature can be added on top of existing non-linear blue water on the map. Only one linear feature should be drawn for each waterway.

Was that satisfactory enough?

On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 1:10 PM, General Map Maker on behalf of eastwest <google-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Actually, this makes me think -- there are creeks around here with wide and narrow spots, and some of the wider spots have been mapped as polygons, but the linear features that flow in and out of them are disconnected -- so a creek on a map is really made up of a series of disconnected lines, which of course does not reflect reality. So here's the question -- can it (and you guys will have a implement this as a new feature, I know) be made so that rivers and "lakes" (or wide spots in rivers) are connected? Or, should we manually draw lines to connect them through the polygons?

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[eastwest]

Well, that just says you can, it doesn't give any guidance on whether it's preferred or non-preferred.

[Nuclear Moose]

What about outright deletion of water features?

Here is a post I wrote in another forum b/c I couldn't find this thread...

IIRC, it was mentioned that we need not, should not be deleting water features - we can change linear to polygonal, etc., but don't be deleting the stuff.

I may not be correct in that, but anyway, please check out this mess:

http://goo.gl/3zNbm

There is a number of water polygons/lines and it seems to me that the one I edited and am awaiting approval on will be fine but there is an offset duplicate that should be deleted along with portions of the linear 'river'.

Thoughts?

===

Maybe I'm over-thinking this and have assumed that deleting is bad bad bad. I have had one GR chastise me for deleting a linear river, but it was more of what Nels speaks of in his post in that I created a polygon over the area.

[Nels]

Hey Craig!

There are of course, edge cases with any set of guidelines we could come up with for a tool as complex as mapmaker.

In this case, I would simply edit the polygons in question to fit the water currently in satellite view. Your instincts that we want to be extremely cautious of deleting water shapes are right on the money.

Hope this helps!

-Nels

[Nuclear Moose]

Nels,

That's cool by me - I'll make it so!

[Nicholas Vetrovec]

So for large rivers and canals, there should be a unnamed water polygon and a named linear feature?