[OSM-talk] disputed territories

[Gervase Markham]

Tony Bowden wrote:
> Gervase Markham wrote:
>> It seems to me that the result we want is to end up with the same name 
>> you'd get as if you bought an official map of the country, as issued by 
>> e.g. the Tourist Board. But I'm not sure how to word it.
> 
> I like that idea. But do the Tourist Board have the authority to issue
> an "official" map?

Note my careful wording, though: I'm not saying that we should take the 
Tourist Board as an authority necessarily, I'm just saying that if 
whatever rule we have creates maps which differ from the ones they 
issue, we might be doing something wrong.

> I think in the L/Derry case, national maps would tend to call the city
> Londonderry, but local maps would tend to call it Derry. Perhaps that's
> an approach we could take: show different names at different zoom
> levels. Currently the name first appears at level 6 [1]. By level 10
> we're looking at the County rather than the Country, by around 12 we're
> mainly the City, and at 15 the name disappears again. Perhaps we could
> render Londonderry from 6 through 9 or 10 and Derry at 10 or 11 through 14?

I think this would be terribly confusing.

It's not a problem for paper maps because no-one has yet implemented a 
paper map with a zoom feature. (Although if you had a book of maps of NI 
at various scales, I bet it would use the same name throughout. But 
counter-examples welcomed.)

This particular case is a very hard nut to crack. I'm hoping most cases 
will be somewhat simpler :-)

You also said:
 > Local government refers to the city as "Derry" (and has now petitioned
 > the Queen to change the name to that), whereas National government
 > refers to the city as "Londonderry".

That seems to me like an admission by the city that the official name is 
currently Londonderry, however much they might wish it to be otherwise.

Gerv