I think, given Ukrainain/Russian history and politics, the Ukrainians have a right to be upset and angry. However OSM has a long standing rule, of “country borders should match de facto physical control”. You’re unhappy with the outcome of that rule, when applied to Crimea. What rule do you think we should use instead?

In the mean time, you can set up your own tileserver displaying borders as you want. They do that in India. That might solve your problem?

Please stop posting the same thing again and again.

I think, given Ukrainain/Russian history and politics, the Ukrainians have a right to be upset and angry. Calling them narcists or cult-members is pointless, knock that off. It is politics, but everything is politics. It’s impossible to be politically neutral.

However OSM has a long standing rule, of “country borders should match de facto physical control”. You’re unhappy with the outcome of that rule, when applied to Crimea. What rule do you think we should use instead?

In the mean time, you can set up your own tileserver displaying borders as you want. They do that in India. That might solve your problem?

Please consult this wiki page: Template:OSM-anarchist, which is older than the boundaries page: “I don’t give a flying monkey’s for tag voting, automatic changebots, endless discussions, categories, or any of that crap, but prefer to get on and actually do stuff.”. The existance of something written on the wiki isn’t definitive, and isn’t the slam dunk case you seem to think. (But here we go, since 2011, the Good Practice wiki page has said: “Don’t map your local legislation, if they are not bound to objects in reality”

OSM has (I presume) been growing for years, with more and more mappers and editors. I wonder why so many mailing lists show large declines in messages in recent years.

Artiom Komolov, do you not see the irony in saying Ireland is in the UK while complaining about Crimea being shown as part of Russia?

“legally binding” isn’t very useful here. The OSM project is free to use any criteria for country borders, and is entirely free to outsource that decision making to the UN and use “UN resolution”.

But that’s not how things have worked in OSM for 10+ years, and there are problems with using “UN resolution” as a criteria, and people advocating for it need to address the issues with it. But I haven’t seen anyone willing to engage in that.

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.