[Tagging] Both proposals for disputed country borders

[Andy Townsend]

(previous conversations heavily edited)

On 28/11/2018 10:49, Rory McCann wrote:
>
>
> On 28/11/2018 06:39, Johnparis wrote:
>
>> ... Finally, is there some reason you want to create a competing 
>> proposal? I don't have any knowledge of two competing proposals being 
>> discussed at the same time; would they be followed by two votes? I 
>> thought the idea was to reach consensus.
>
> Yes this can appear a little snarky, that's not my intent. I half 
> heartely suggested this idea 2 years ago ( 
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2016-May/029211.html 
> ), but abandoned it.
>
> As you know, recent events mean OSM should have an answer to this. 
> We'll talk and discuss and surely we can come to consensus.
>
Personally at this stage I'd suggest keeping things simple, and 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/ClaimedBorders is 
certainly simpler than 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Mapping_disputed_boundaries 
.  Some of the definition in Mapping_disputed_boundaries is useful, but 
some might need clarifying (I'm thinking of the "De facto borders" and 
"Default borders" definitions, which if I read correctly is just 
defining some of what we currently do).  I suspect that the idea of 
"OSM-designated borders" might meet some opposition, even though we 
effectively have those in a few places.  The former Western Sahara is an 
example; attempts to claim that Morocco has control over all of the 
former Western Sahara have been reverted, but attempts to better map the 
wall (which is visible from imagery) have been welcomed.

As I understand it, the broad requirements of both proposals are similar 
- in a case with two claims over an area you'd get either two extra 
relations (in the case of Crimea) or only one (Serbia/Kosovo).  The new 
relations will be large (relations the size of a country, however you 
define that, tend to be) and may be subject to breakage as current 
admin_level=2 relations are (those are monitored by e.g. 
https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=728103#p728103 ).

It'd be good to get something into the OSM data that represents these 
claims so that we can provide fully worked examples to people who want 
to render particular sets of borders, the same as we do for people who 
want to create maps in a particular language.

Best Regards,

Andy