According to Wikipedia some countries recognise that Crimea is in Russia. And some (most) don’t. So what is the outcome of “international recognition” in this case? That’s a problem with “international recognition”, it can be ambiguous.

The OSM wiki does not say the international borders are based on a standard (which isn’t a standard for borders anyway), it only says “what counts as a country”. Regardless, OSM policy is not defined by the wiki.

OSM is for profit? I haven’t seen my payment. Do I need to sign a special form for that? How much do I get?

(i) please define “internationally recognized” (ii) Country borders in OSM aren’t based on the ISO-3166 standard and how they lay it out, they are based on “de facto physical control”. The “on the ground” rule also apply to the name of towns/cities, not just PoIs. An edit way in Cyprus 10+ years ago over place names is where this rule comes from.

@tkk OSM is a volunteer community. We’re not doing it for profit. We’re mapping things “as they are on the ground”. One outcome of that is this border. Can you suggest a better, neutral, unambiguous way to decide where to draw country borders?

OSM has a long standing rule of drawing borders where “de facto physical control” is. By this rule, Crimea should be marked as being in Russia. I’m not sure what your suggesting replacing that rule with. “UN resolution” might sound nice but (i) it’s heavily biased to a few former countries, (ii) please tell me where the borders of Isreal is according to this criteria (should we use UN Resolution 181? Why not?)

There are some proposals to allow the mapping of “the border of country A according to country B” (#1, #2). Assisting in this process, with mapping, with software support, can be very useful toward solving this issue. I think we all sympathize with the people of Ukraine.

OSM has a long standing rule of drawing borders where “de facto physical control” is. By this rule, Crimea should be marked as being in Russia. I’m not sure what your suggesting replacing that rule with. “UN resolution” might sound nice but (i) it’s heavily biased to a few former countries, (ii) please tell me where the borders of Isreal is according to this criteria (should we use UN Resolution 181? Why not?)

There are some proposals to allow the mapping of “the border of country A according to country B” (#1, #2). Assisting in this process, with mapping, with software support, can be very useful toward solving this issue. I think we all sympathize with the people of Ukraine.

There should be a way to map disputed borders & claims in OSM, I have one proposal.

OSM uses an “on the ground rule” and maps countries (admin_level=2) based on de facto control (which puts Crimea in Russia), and no matter what other tagging scheme is used, I’m sure this policy’s effect here will upset people, and I don’t know if there’s a way to solve that. I haven’t seen any suggested alternative to the “on the ground” rule.

OSM’s country borders are based on “de facto control”, which is clear. has low ambiguity and reflects how things work on the ground. I still haven’t seen any good proposal for what to replace that with. If you don’t like this rule, please suggest a better rule for how to decide where a border is!

The people of Ukraine have my sympathy. Violence and aggression like this is wrong. I’m curious what rule you think OSM should use for country borders if we are to change from the “de facto control on the ground rule”. UN Resolutions are tricky, what do we put for the borders of Isreal & Palestine? “Numerous Governments” is vague, which governments? Should Kosovo be marked as a separate country?

I can understand why you’re angry, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t be. We are making a map of the whole world, and we need to agree on clear standards. Perhaps we can figure out a better approach.

Here’s my suggestion for how to map claimed/disputed border like this: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/ClaimedBorders. I am curious what people here think and if this would be beneficial.

The written evidence for OSM’s “on the ground rule” dated back more than 10 years

I think anyone watching the news with half a conscience can sympathize with Ukrainian victims of Russian violence. The long standing OSM rule of “de facto control” is unfortunately clear in this case, and has been applied consistently.

Remember, OSM is open data. If you want, you can make a custom map showing whatever you want.

I’m sorry this is happening. And I agree with your general point that often there are no neutral stances. Fundamentally, OSM has always had a “de-facto control” for country borders. Alas, there is nothing really new or radical with the DWG’s decisions.

And please stop dog whistle calls for violence against DWG members.

Facebook has been talking (#1, #2) about open sourcing their version of iD for 1¾ years.

@Carlos LGBTQ = lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer. It’s a common acronym. Not all people identify (or want to identify) as queer, since it has often been used against them.

I’m open to using other acronyms, but I suspect we’ll always come up short. 🙂

Yes, the TIGER import was done in 2007 An initial attempt in 2005 was reverted. The quality is pretty bad.

The PBF format has numerous tricks to save space, which means common tags for a “chunk of objects” might only take 1 byte to store the key.

There used to be a QA tool that used contour data to see if a river was mapped as flowing uphill, and flag it as suspect. But I can’t remember what it was.

@ftrebrien I’m suggesting lgbtq:*=*. So one can map lgbtq=primary for a simple, general case, and go into more details with lgbtq:lesbian=primary, lgbtq:gay_male=no, etc., etc.

@ChristianSW I covered problems with the gay=* tag in my first email, namely the LGBTQ community is larger than just gay (men).

@Alan Trick: There are a minority of LGBTQ venues aimed at certain subsets of the LGBTQ community, I think that could be solved with lgbtq:X=(primary/no/only)" etc. (e.g. lgbtq:lesbian=primary -> mainly a lesbian venue. lgbtq:lesbian=no -> no lesbians allowed. lgbtq:lesbian=only only lesbians (though I'm unsure about 'only')), so further details can be tagged. lgbtq=primary/designed/whatever` can mean “the LGBTQ in general”.

I thought about =designated, and it’s in keeping with OSM conventions. I thought it was only for things officially designed that by an official body. LGBTQ venues aren’t like that. 🤔

Welcome to OSM. I’m glad OSM has helped you with social issues. Is there anything it can’t do? ☺