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

[Frederik Ramm]

Greg,

Greg Troxel wrote:
> 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".

I think that people sometimes tag wayside crosses or little shrines as 
"places of worship", even if they serve only the occasional rambler or 
maybe a procession of catholics once a year.

I'd be wary of putting up such requirements. They get you into trouble 
because it may well be that if the "Church of Joe" attracts a drunken 
crowd once each year for Joe's birthday, his "Church" may be visited 
more often than some obscure shrine on the side of a mountain somewhere, 
and then you're fully into a "yours is not a proper religion but mine 
is" argument.

> 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.

I still think that, while understandable, going down this way will deny 
a lot of established religions some of *their* places of worship.

Bye
Frederik