[Tagging] Related: Antarctic territories

[Fernando Trebien]

I gave it some more thought and I think it may be best for the
community to abstain from such disputes (otherwise we would be dragged
into them). The fact that we refer to them in a special way
linguistically (calling them "disputed territories" or "territorial
claims") means to me that they probably should be mapped in some
special way, and not forcibly fitted into other definitions. Such
controversial issues would likely be solved faster by voting than by
subjective fuzzy logic. We could vote if we're going to follow UN
definitions, some other definition, or vote for each particular case
(which may involve a lot of discussion).

Surely resorting to UN's definitions would be much faster, but not
less controversial. Perhaps we could be conservative, including in the
country itself only the area that is not disputed, then mapping
disputed areas as admin_level=2 entities (as if they were independent)
also adding disputed=yes, and then create a special membership role
(such as "claimed") and use it to add the disputed areas (which may be
relations themselves) to the relations representing the involved
countries.

On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 8:56 AM, Jonathan <bigfatfrog67 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am not qualified to answer any of these questions as I've never got
> involved in editing boundaries in OSM however it does raise an interesting
> wider question, which is, how do we map all territories that are claimed by
> one country or another but not internationally recognised?
>
> Some territories are officially recognised by the UN as being under dispute
> but then there are others where the UN recognise one nations claim over
> another's but it has never been enforced. First example that springs to mind
> is the land that Israel has taken from the Palestinians and the UN demand
> that Israel roles back it's current borders.  Do we map what is on the
> ground, which seems to be the common argument, or do we map what is widely
> recognised as the official situation?
>
> Sorry for not proffering any answers but more questions ;-)
>
> Jonathan
>
> http://bigfatfrog67.me
>
>
> On 23/12/2013 04:33, Fernando Trebien wrote:
>>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> I'm not sure if I should post this question here. If not, please point
>> me in a better direction.
>>
>> I was optimizing some boundaries in Antarctica and then realized some
>> countries had included as part of their country borders their claimed
>> territories in Antarctica, namely: Australia, Norway and Argentina.
>>
>> Now, the Antarctic Treaty
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty) does not state that
>> these countries have actual jurisdiction nor sovereignty over these
>> areas (it does not deny it also). Additionally, the wiki says that,
>> for clarity, a country in OSM should be equivalent to an ISO-3166
>> entity (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Admin_level#National).
>>
>> None of Antartica's claimed territories are ISO-3166 entities (so
>> they're not countries and are probably part of other countries - so
>> far so good), but Antartica is, so Antarctica is a country in OSM - a
>> strange one whose subdivisions do not belong to itself (but that's ok
>> in theory). Oddity aside, I wouldn't worry about adding Chile's and
>> NZ's territories to their countries, but if I added UK's, then it
>> naturally follows that we also would have to add all other British
>> overseas territories to UK - but we can't, because most of them are
>> ISO-3166 entities, therefore, countries.
>>
>> So how do we solve this conundrum fairly? Should we...
>> - add the claimed territories to the respective countries, except UK?
>> - add all claimed territories, but no UK overseas territories besides
>> the Antarctic one?
>> - override the ISO-3166 rule and add overseas territories to UK?
>> - remove claimed territories from the borders of Australia, Norway and
>> Argentina, and perhaps create relations for overseas territories of
>> each of these countries, like they apparently do in France
>> (http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/2186658)?
>>
>> I think the last solution may be superior because:
>> - AFAIK no treaty gives sovereignty/jurisdiction/special rights to any
>> of the claiming countries over any of these claimed territories
>> - less confusing (it always seems weird to create exceptions on
>> established patterns), particularly because:
>> --- I believe almost nobody thinks of those territories when thinking
>> of the claiming countries; and
>> --- I think a letter sent to any of these territories wouldn't
>> normally be addressed to Norway, Argentina or Australia
>> - consequently, it may help to avoid future edit wars
>>
>> It may, however, create problems to applications that assume that
>> these areas are states/provinces/etc. of their respective countries.
>> On the other hand, I believe that the impact would be minimal and that
>> many other common things in OSM force programmers to create exceptions
>> in their code more often.
>>
>> What do you think? Am I missing something fundamental?
>>
>> I know I'm meddling in other nations business, but I'm curious since I
>> stumbled upon the problem.
>>
>
>
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-- 
Fernando Trebien
+55 (51) 9962-5409

"The speed of computer chips doubles every 18 months." (Moore's law)
"The speed of software halves every 18 months." (Gates' law)