Nodes with no lat/lon

"An offset of a fifty to a hundred feet or so is trivial,"
100 feet is just shy of 110 wavelengths on 5.8GHz.  100 Feet is the difference between a building blocking a 90 degrees ray to the south or blocking a 90 degrees ray to the south east. 100 feet is the difference of being at 6000ft or being at 4000ft above sea level on the mountain,  The list of changes that 100ft does is VERY significant.  I usually map down to the meter or even 1/3 meter when I calculate my links on Radio Mobile. 100ft is the difference for me to cover all of San Diego county from a site on Palomar Mountain and barely being able to cover 200 feet away. When 3 feet is the difference of me making a link and not making a link, even 10 feet is far from trivial. 50 feet is sometimes the difference between my north facing node and my south facing test node on my house (I don't often run 2 but sometimes I do) how does a user know that its really 50 feet away and not just offset for your map when users start being encouraged to put false info?


"Besides, it's obvious from the DtD links displayed that they're co-located."
Absolutely false. As the lead programmer who wrote the DTDLink specifications I can tell you there is no guarantee to this, it may have been designed that way to some degree but was never hard locked that DTDLinked nodes are co-located. I specifically deigned it so a node would not necessarily be co-located if it had a reliable hardwire link, this could be miles with fiber optics or leased line, or just feet with copper Ethernet connection.. A human may be able to guess on this but software would have no clue about this. I've also seen some HAM's up your way abuse the DTDLink system to route over far distances, they show DTDLink but they are not co-located.

"and contributes to ease of maintenance of our network."
How does putting false data contribute to ease of maintenance of your network?  I can see how it contributes to allow you not to have to spend the time to program additional features into your map software to provide a break out (its the same flaw we have on the AREDN live map and why we recommend KML files instead) but I can't see how it aids the network itself, all I see it do is hinder the network long term because it means we can no longer trust anything a user puts into the node information screen. Plus 100 feet is hardly visable on the map untill you soom in to peak zoom levels meaning it does nothing for users untill they zoom in, when a breakout on the map would actually make it more obvious at all zoom levels.

PS: I've received contact in the past about you group contacting ham's down my way, they have expressed great disapproval about the group up there trying to force the standards the map project up there runs on the mesh networks down here. I managed to calm them down (told them there was no requirement to follow the naming standard trying to be forced upon them) but it ruffled some feathers with my local hams, I get a feeling this post will do the same (it sure has ruffled my feathers.)

NOTE: This post contains personal opinion and should not be treated as an official statment or policy of the AREDN project.