[OSM-talk] National borders in the British Islands

[Dave Stubbs]

On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 12:53 PM, Dermot McNally <dermotm at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2008/5/29 Dave Stubbs <osm.list at randomjunk.co.uk>:
>
>> The NI border hasn't been put into the OSM database.
>
> It has. I've been tweaking bits of it for months now. Look for ID 24428706.
>
>> This is just an indication of the conflicted definition of country,
>> nation, and national. The borders are in the OSM DB as admin_level 2
>> (national border).
>> You try telling any one of those nationalities that they're not
>> actually a country.... I'll stand well back when you do it.
>
> The word "country" needn't be a stumbling block here. That's just
> language.

Who says I was just talking about language? Nobody said (as in the
current wiki page doesn't) admin_level=2 represents sovereign states
recognised by the UN... or whatever the concrete definition is that
you're getting at. It says "country borders, such as the border
between Austria and Germany". That's open to some interpretation,
which may not have been the intention of the people writing the page,
but there you go.


> In German, "Land" can mean "Bundesland" just as often as it
> means "country". But we can't go tagging UK internal borders the same
> way as we do those of sovereign states, because it doesn't accurately
> depict reality.

Depends what reality you're trying to depict :-). Again, I get what
you're saying and would tend to agree when using the same definition
you're using, but I'd still stand back a bit when trying to explain it

Dave