[OSM-talk] Edit war on Key:religion - Pastafarians

[Greg Troxel]

  In other words, stop the edit war, discuss pros and cons on the talk
  page, and be open to include more rather than remove. If it is
  concluded as not a religion than find alternative tagging.

  [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:religion
  [2] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:denomination

Frederik's comment about the on-the-ground-rule is right on.  Before
reading the talk page, I was thinking: "we only put places_of_worship on
the map when there is a place on the ground that is self-labeled a place
of worship and (more or less) the community views it as such as
evidenced by holding services of some kind with some attendance".  This
latter part is necessary to exclude Joe putting up a "church of Joe" in
his front yard; the town would then say "joe is a nutcase", as opposed
to if he held services weekly and 20 people came, where they'd say
something more like ".... but I suppose it's a church".

Perhaps those who want to include Pastafarianism should send in links to
pictures of churches, together with descriptions of how they pass the
'act like a church' and 'viewed by the community as a church' tests in
their local community.

As for 'this group thinks this mountain is a sacred place, but there's
no sign', I think there needs to be a "widely recognized by the
community" test.  For example, it might be reasonable to put the 4 main
vortexes in Sedona on the map, but not the other 100 that everyone
claims is on their property.  (The main 4 pass the test that if you go
to Sedona and walk around and ask random people they will know about
them, more or less.)

We should remember that the purpose of maps is to represent reality to
map users, not to make political points.  It's hard to tell which is
going on here, but if no one comes up with pictures of worship houses
for disputed religions, it seems like a frivolous argument.

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