ke9tv (2025-05-20 18:01:56+00:00): Please don't jump to conclusions. I have no objection whatsoever to overriding the 'place=*' assignment for Woodridge. (As far as I can remember, I've never been there.)

When I started the exercise, virtually all the 'place=*' nodes for New York municipalities came from an earlier import. They were full of inappropriate assignments, some quite egregious, because they were all based on the form of government. What you refer to as "local law" and wish to canonize is, in fact, almost a historical accident. There are small cities, such as Brentwood and Levittown (each of which has over 60,000 inhabitants) that were classed as 'place=hamlet' because they have no local government other than their containing townships. There were nearly uninhabited places (population of no more than a few hundred), such as Red House, Hardenburgh, and Arietta, that were classed as 'place=town' simply because they're townships. There was also a 'place=town' for the defunct settlement of Tusten (burnt to the ground in the French and Indian War, and never rebuilt), because that's the name of the township whose seat of government is Narrowsburg.  There was a 'place=city' on the small village of Sherrill, because it has a city charter. The Village of Hempstead, also a small city, was 'place=village' because that is its form of government.

There were dozens, if not hundreds, of such inversions, because in New York, the form of government is at most only loosely correlated with the size or importance of a place, which is what 'place=*' is supposed to represent.  'Town of', in  particular, predicts nothing. The entire state is carved up into townships, whose populations range from a few dozen to a few million.  But 'village', 'hamlet' and even 'city' are only a little more predictive. A legal 'hamlet' can be a city of 60,000 and a legal 'city' can be a village of 3000.

Of course, the political organization of the state is also important. It is retained on all the boundary relations. If you look at the boundary of Woodridge, you will be able to discern that it is incorporated as a village. 

Population was simply the most obvious surrogate to use that was available for all the places.  The change was discussed fairly extensively on the forums at the time, and the conclusion was that it was most likely to be an overall improvement, even if it might damage some boundary cases.  Places whose 'place=*' was changed from the original import were left alone.

In reviewing the changes, I did make some overrides for places that I knew.  Saranac Lake, for instance, got upgraded to a 'town' despite its tiny size, because it has the only commercial airport, the only hospital, and the only large department store for many miles around; it is the market center serving a large hinterland. I also upgraded a few communities like Watertown and Binghamton to cities even though they didn't quite meet the (somewhat arbitrary) population cutoff.

The intent was to clean up an unholy mess coming from an import and at least have a place hierarchy that roughly reflected reality on the ground, not to run roughshod over the locals!  (A related project reimported political boundaries; what existed before the reimport was truly wretched.)

In reviewing the 'place=*' nodes, I also added the Yiddish names for several places where it is the majority language, or at least a significant minority, for example Kiryas Joel, New Square, and Kaser,
added Seneca names for places in western New York on and near the reservations (using a list provided by the Seneca Nation).

In short, condemning the entire effort as 'condescending and imperialistic' without considering whether it was an improvement of what has come before it is expecting unachievable perfection. Truly, I'm doing what I can, and doing my best to defer to the locals!