[Tagging] Micronations

Andy Townsend ajt1047 at gmail.com
Sun Feb 24 22:54:56 UTC 2019


On 09/02/2019 19:47, Sergio Manzi wrote:
>
> The thing is quite obviously fruit of immagination, creativity, and/or 
> delusion: there surely isn't out there such a concoction of toll 
> booths (/many of them/), bunkers, town halls, dams, towers, 
> campgrounds, etc.
>

As Simon has already mentioned this user has been reported, reverted and 
blocked (and a number of sock-puppets have been reverted and blocked 
too).  I'm assuming it's just a kid and they'll get bored eventually.  
It may take a while.


> ... but again I'm ready to bet that those detailed micronation's 
> features are not to be found on the ground.


In a number of cases there _is_ something there, but what's there isn't 
by any stretch of the imagination a "country".  Sealand's probably the 
most famous example of this, but there are plenty of others , such as 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Hutt_River .  Just map 
whatever's there such as a housename or a property name.

> And that concerns me a lot, because it is really hard not thinking 
> what implications events like this can have on the reliable 
> availability of OSM data/services.
>
All data (not just OSM's) is "unreliable" for some value of 
unreliable.    OSM currently has two new-build houses down the street 
from me now that I suspect no other provider has, but other providers 
have plenty of information that OSM doesn't.  Also, every data consumer 
(of any data source) will always need to sanity check what they read in 
to make sure that it's sensible. That sanity checking might be a little 
or a lot, depending on what you're doing with the data.  Just displaying 
a nice geographical background?  Probably not so much checking needed.  
Displaying "countries of the world" and specifically targeting India or 
China?  You'll definitely need to adjust the data to match the 
"alternative facts" of your target market rather than actual physical 
reality  (and of course a map that works for one won't work for the other).

Best Regards,

Andy


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/attachments/20190224/509e7958/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the Tagging mailing list