[OSM-talk] Advice needed - dispute regarding names in Cyprus

Nic Roets nroets at gmail.com
Sat Nov 10 20:21:05 GMT 2007


> The only workeable solution will be to in the end not show any names
> by default for certain areas until the user has selected a
> language/political preference. Bonus points if that choice is
> partly automated (looking at the http headers and what not)

Remember that we aren't really drawing maps for people who know the
area. We're drawing maps for tourists (or netcitizens) who are not
informed by about the local political situation. I think mappers
should use the description that a tourguide or journalists would use,
which may well be something like
name=The Disputed City Of ...
name:el=...
name:tk=...
(Perhaps "The Disputed ... Of" can be shortened into an icon).
And it there still is a dispute, a simple way to break disputes would
be let a mapper or a panel of mappers from a foreign independent
country decide.

If the Greek and Turkish do not like this, they can pay for their own
servers and set up their own OSM project.

I also live in a city with a "disputed" name called "Pretoria" by some
and "Tshwane" by others. And I can tell you that it gets to a point
where a lot of people want to change the name just to lift the cloud.
People show their colours when their request or resist name changes
for petty reasons. Most people feel hurt if they find out that the
rest of the world view them as "bullies" or "racists".




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