I was inquiring how the scalerank for the Mountains are created. I have looked through much of the data and could not figure it out.
The following is an example from your dataset:
Kanchenjunga has an elevation of 8586 meters and a scalerank of 9 whereas K2 (8611 meters) and Everest (8848 meters) both have a scalerank of 2.
Shouldn’t Kanchenjunga have a similar ranking as Everest and K2 based on its elevation.
Are your scaleranks based on elevation, proximity, or any other characteristics?
Any details on this would help.
Thank you
There are many mountains that are all bunched up between Everest and K2. They are all tall. The scalerank attribute is for displaying them on a map. We want Everest and K2 to show up before Kanchenjunga so they get a “smaller” scalerank than Kanchenjunga. Natural Earth generally has scaleranks between 0 and 9, so this would be one of the last mountains added to the map as it’s zoomed in. Obviously Natural Earth is good for small scale maps of the world, so as you zoom in past the scales Natural Earth is intended for, many more smaller peaks would also be added to the map.
It could also be that Kanchenjunga should have a more important scale rank (somewhere between 2 and 9). But I wouldn’t expect it to be any smaller than 5 or 6. These scaleranks are meant to be consistent within a theme (physical elevation label points) and work well with other themes all at once. When would you expect to see this mountain added to the map as it’s zoomed in?
If I’m following what you are saying, then scale ranks are calculated using the elevation and the elevation of surrounding areas. Meaning that scale ranks are calculated regionally and not individually.
If this is the case, are scale ranks also affected if the opposite is true, EXAMPLE: a mtn has no surrounding features so its scale rank is increased. Any clarification that you could provide would be greatly appreaciated.
Are the Mountains scale rankings being calculated using other features or only the mountain features?
They are calculated by humans, using roughly the technique you describe, using a mix of the mountain and other themes.
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