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--></style></head><body lang=EN-GB link=blue vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=TR>> Based on that (and unless anyone can dig out more compelling evidence), <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=TR>I don't think that the name "Null Island" has "cut through" to the <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=TR>general public yet</span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>There are videos on YouTube with millions of views that are about or mention null island. For example this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c1am8NSx_s">video</a> mentioning the place has over 3 million views, and this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjvIpI-1w84">video</a> about the place has over 2 million views. I think 3 million people from around the world is enough to for it to have "cut through" to the general public</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div style='mso-element:para-border-div;border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0cm 0cm 0cm'><p class=MsoNormal style='border:none;padding:0cm'><b>Kimden: </b><a href="mailto:ajt1047@gmail.com">Andy Townsend</a><br><b>Gönderilme: </b>06 January 2022 12:00<br><b>Kime: </b><a href="mailto:talk@openstreetmap.org">talk@openstreetmap.org</a><br><b>Konu: </b>Re: [OSM-talk] Was the deletion of Null Island reasonable?</p></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>On 03/01/2022 02:14, Emil Linus Albrecht wrote:</p><p class=MsoNormal>> This is a little outdated, yes, but debate has just sparked in the OSM </p><p class=MsoNormal>> World Discord server about a deletion of something, some might </p><p class=MsoNormal>> consider the base of everything: Null Island (Node #9028040143).</p><p class=MsoNormal>><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>A bit of the history of what happened might provide a bit of context.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The history of the monitoring station can be seen at:</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>https://map.atownsend.org.uk/maps/osm-deep-history/#/node/3815077900</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>(I've used that version of the "deep history" so that everyone can </p><p class=MsoNormal>easily see comments and replies on editors' changesets)</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>It was originally added as a seamark, then went through various tags </p><p class=MsoNormal>before becoming established as a "man_made=monitoring_station". </p><p class=MsoNormal>Occasionally the wikipedia link "en:Null Island" was added and then </p><p class=MsoNormal>removed. Fairly regularly it got deleted by people clearing up other </p><p class=MsoNormal>rubbish that had been added at latitude 0, longitude 0 and then </p><p class=MsoNormal>reinstated. In July 2021 it got its own wikipedia page* and shortly </p><p class=MsoNormal>afterwards the "locality" for "null island" was added as </p><p class=MsoNormal>https://map.atownsend.org.uk/maps/osm-deep-history/#/node/9028040143 .</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>More generally, on names:</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Normally, names are assigned by locals, although the language used may </p><p class=MsoNormal>no longer be spoken locally. Where I live in the UK there's a River </p><p class=MsoNormal>Ouse (which apparently just means "water" in old Celtic languages) and a </p><p class=MsoNormal>River Foss (Latin for "ditch"). Sometimes names are more recent - When </p><p class=MsoNormal>the canal was built between Amsterdam and Haarlem in what is now the </p><p class=MsoNormal>Netherlands, "Halfweg" was half-way along it. Someone called it that </p><p class=MsoNormal>first, but the name stuck, and now everyone calls the village that got </p><p class=MsoNormal>established there that.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Sometimes names don't stick around - in Chesterfield in the UK the </p><p class=MsoNormal>"Terminus" was the end of the tram near </p><p class=MsoNormal>https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/241925109 . The name on the nearby </p><p class=MsoNormal>pub survived the tram by many years, but now only survives as a bowls </p><p class=MsoNormal>club named after the pub up the road: </p><p class=MsoNormal>https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/418090482 . Everyone called the </p><p class=MsoNormal>roundabout that https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/816931479 was part of </p><p class=MsoNormal>"Donkin's Island" ("island" means "roundabout" in </p><p class=MsoNormal>Chesterfield/Sheffield) for many years - Bryan Donkin was a company that </p><p class=MsoNormal>had a building with a large sign overlooking it, which has since been </p><p class=MsoNormal>demolished. Sheffield's "Hole in the Road" (see </p><p class=MsoNormal>https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/retro-day-sheffields-hole-road-was-filled-462529 </p><p class=MsoNormal>) was similar - neither name was "official", but pretty much everyone </p><p class=MsoNormal>used that name exclusively.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>"Null island" is a bit like that - someone invented the name (I've no </p><p class=MsoNormal>idea who myself, but have heard people suggest Natural Earth or Esri), </p><p class=MsoNormal>and (at least within the "map nerd" community), it's stuck.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The question is - has "Null Island" reached that level of familiarity </p><p class=MsoNormal>within the world at large? In order to find out, you'd normally ask the </p><p class=MsoNormal>locals. A classic example of this is </p><p class=MsoNormal>https://web.archive.org/web/20190225133138/http://ma3t.co.uk/euanmills/euanmills/tifd.html </p><p class=MsoNormal>- someone walked down the A10 in London asking locals where they were. </p><p class=MsoNormal>Unfortunately, it's difficult to do this in the middle of the Atlantic. </p><p class=MsoNormal>People who might know are people who maintain the buoy** </p><p class=MsoNormal>https://www.brest.ird.fr/pirata/pirata_cruises.php , but there's no </p><p class=MsoNormal>mention of "null island" there, or in the French "what we did on site" </p><p class=MsoNormal>text in the linked PDF.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Based on that (and unless anyone can dig out more compelling evidence), </p><p class=MsoNormal>I don't think that the name "Null Island" has "cut through" to the </p><p class=MsoNormal>general public yet***, although it might do in time.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Best Regards,</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Andy ("SomeoneElse" and "SomeoneElse_Revert" in the changeset links above)</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>* though "The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general </p><p class=MsoNormal>notability guideline": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_Buoy . The </p><p class=MsoNormal>fact that a verifiable real-world thing is "less notable" than an </p><p class=MsoNormal>imaginary concept says quite a lot about Wikipedia...</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>** this was dug out by someone in the Discord channel - thanks!</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>*** and I'm not convinced that "Bliss Hill" </p><p class=MsoNormal>https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2327750884 has either, though you can </p><p class=MsoNormal>find actual 3rd-party references for the name: </p><p class=MsoNormal>https://gizmodo.com/no-the-famous-windows-xp-hill-is-not-on-fire-1819845152 </p><p class=MsoNormal>.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>_______________________________________________</p><p class=MsoNormal>talk mailing list</p><p class=MsoNormal>talk@openstreetmap.org</p><p class=MsoNormal>https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>