[OSM-talk] Fwd: OSM & Political problems (Re: China cracks down onillegal online map services to protect state security)

[paul youlten]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: paul youlten <paul.youlten at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 7:05 AM
Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] OSM & Political problems (Re: China cracks down
onillegal online map services to protect state security)
To: Tom Chance <tom at acrewoods.net>


While "edit wars" might upset a few, very passionate editors who take
absolutist positions on geography, politics and history - such conflicts are
not totally negative because they are often picked up by the local media and
promoted to a wider audience.

For example the OSM edit war (or skirmish) in Northern Cyprus a few months
ago could have got more people interested in OSM if we had done a press
release about it.

Equally, getting banned isn't always a bad thing. Wikipedia has been blocked
by the Great Firewall of China several times - every time it happens
Wikipedia gets a lot of media attention - which brings more people and
editors to the wiki, the community feels like they are protecting free
speech - which helps their motivation.

So if (or maybe when) OSM gets blocked by the authorities in China we should
all celebrate.

Paul Y



On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 3:29 AM, Tom Chance <tom at acrewoods.net> wrote:

>
> On Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:14:00 +0100, "Bernt M. Johnsen" <berntm at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > I think this will be an increasing problem as OSM gains more momentum.
> > For some people, national boundaries have huge political importance,
> > and we should perhaps give some thought on how to deal with this
> > before we get an edit war wrt Taiwan is a country or wether Kosovo is
> > a part of Serbia or not.
> >
> > Wikipedia has these problems and deals with them (see e.g. this
> > article with corresponding discussions:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide), but since OSM is more
> > like a sea of data than a set of separate articles, I assume it migt
> > be more complex to deal with  in OSM.
> >
> > I also assume (could not find anything in the wiki) that OSM ideally
> > should be politically neutral.
>
> Of course the problem is that there is usually no such thing as
> "neutrality", you either call Taiwan a country or you don't and both
> positions are politically charged. The closest we could come would be, for
> example, to call Taiwan an island and part of China since the UN
> recognises
> it as such.
>
> Kind regards,
> Tom
>
>
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