[Tagging] RFC: Removal of Eruvs from OSM, and further boundry=religious

[Kevin Kenny]

On Tue, Sep 6, 2022 at 2:44 PM Evan Carroll <me at evancarroll.com> wrote:

>
> * EXCLUSION IN OSM: An Eruv excludes community members of other religions
> and non-believers from engaging in a dispute. Further, an Eruv requires
> renting all non-Jews' homes in a ceremonial lease with the government to
> use non-Jews property, potentially against their consent. Including other
> (non-Jews) place of worship. To the extent that a religion requires
> excluding other religions, do we want this in OSM?
>

It prohibits only those who observe it; if two Gentiles get in an argument
within an eruv chatzerot, I'm not aware of any halachic requirement to stop
it or exclude them. According to most halachists, it does NOT require
renting all the homes within the enclosure, only the public spaces. (It is
not permissible to carry into a home that is not rented; most Jews who
observe the prohibition look for mezuzot on the doorposts.)


> * DISPUTE RESOLUTION: It gives us no method of dispute resolution. If one
> person or a group of people get to say it's right _because_ they said so,
> we have a problem. We should avoid these situations. Presumably, we don't
> want to handle ecclesiastical differences on the tagging list.
>

The marking _is_ observable in the field. (I concede that there could be a
dispute whether what is observed is a valid eruv chatzerot, but there's a
physical object that either is there or is not.)


> * EQUAL ACCESS TO FEATURE: Are all religions entitled to
> boundary=religious? This needs to be a policy either way. Specifically, why
> won't the Church of Satan be allowed equal treatment here, and how will we
> exclude just their religion?
>

If the Church of Satan marks the boundary in a physical way that
non-adherents can observe, I would not exclude it.


> * ABSTRACT CRITERIA: Are only boundaries with physical demarcations
> allowed? Is an area by decree of authority welcome? Can a boundary be made
> with arbitrary objects? For example, can I claim the area between
> Niagara Falls and the Rio Grande are sacred grounds for my religion? Those
> are actual definable features. It would be very easy to piggy back on them
> to give "objective grounds" to a boundary=religious. Moreover, an Eruv is
> often a barrier hung above the ground, but one can easily imagine a
> religion where the barrier must be buried below the ground: we have pipes
> in OSM. Will we allow a boundary=religious if the objective status is
> determined by digging up the pipe?
>

My personal standard for 'observable' is typically 'detectable by a person
visiting the site using an ordinary exercise of the senses', but opinions
differ.  There seems to be a fairly broad consensus that pipelines are OK,
but then again, most are observable by being marked on the ground above -
if only to avoid backhoe accidents. I'd not map things like diocesan and
parochial boundaries ordinarily, unless they are also administrative
boundaries; in some theocratic countries, they are. We have been pretty
explicit that boundaries established by the civil government
(administrative divisions, parks, military areas, etc.), or corresponding
with areas of public access (for example. NGO-owned  nature reserves), are
fair game while other unmarked cadastre is not. In particular, we do not
map the cadastral boundaries of individual homes, respecting privacy.
(Sometimes an individual establishment turns up 'by exclusion' if it is
totally surrounded by other things that are mapped:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/7393864 is an example.)


> * DEFINITION IN OSM: How will we know what the demarcation is, whether
> fishing line or otherwise, when it's not listed? How will the wikipage for
> tagging an Eruv read: entire tomes are devoted to its existence.
> https://www.amazon.com/dp/1680251325 Eruv of fishing line has specific
> requirements that are subject to different Jewish laws: ie., does fishing
> line work, how high from the pole must the line be, Can you mount a pole to
> a pole? Should this be documented?
>
* AUTHORITY: How should another person maintain an Eruv? If the fishing
> line deviates from the boundary in OSM should the boundary be updated
> without the approval of the clergy? Think a prankster extending an Eruv.
> How can OSM provide any assurances of this?
> * EXPLICITLY STATEFUL: Do we want features where in the normal course of
> operation they can be invalided and have to be checked weekly? An Eruv is
> "down" if any link is down. How does OSM track the status of the Eruv?
> Guidance of this is, if the Eruv can be fixed you're supposed to tell
> people of the status. If it can NOT be fixed you're supposed to withhold
> the status. How do we reflect that in OSM?
> https://www.sefaria.org/Peninei_Halakhah%2C_Shabbat.29.8.7?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en Do
> we have state_of_fishing_line, and state_of_eruv_for_adherents tag?
>

I think that inclusion of `operator=*` would address most of these
concerns: 'here is where to go for more information about this feature' .
The very openness of OSM means that we can't entirely exclude vandalism,
but we historically do have ways to respond to it.  If the fishing line
deviates from the formal boundary, then OSM should follow what's in the
field.

There is no policy at all about this. I think it's time to draft something
> more transparent then to assume boundary=religious is an "anything goes
> because someone thinks it" tag.
>
> Side note, I think the technical solution to putting this stuff in another
> layer is certainly an improvement. Even better though, imho, is just to
> host your own PostGIS database and have a table in there that you control.
>
> Typically, authority is central to a religion. Asking an open source
> project to defer to your authority to include features is an unreasonable
> request.
>

-- 
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin
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