[OSM-talk] Komuna e Malishevs, Serbia ?
Mike
mike.cuttlers at gmail.com
Mon Apr 2 15:37:32 BST 2012
On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 4:30 PM, Mike Cuttlers <mike.cuttlers at gmail.com>
wrote:
imagine someone who goes to prishtina with a printed osm map
with the serbian names and trys to find something, they ask for
help and show the map to someone, the people on the ground wont
be happy to see a map like that and the tourist wont be happy
either.
Man, are you serious? Signs in Kosovo i Metohija are still written
in both Serbian and Albanian language, so any tourist would do ok
whatever language is used on map. But it is not good enough for you.
You are advocating only Albanian to be used. It is not hard to guess
why.
On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 7:37 AM, Mike Dupont
<jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com
<mailto:jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com>> wrote:
On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 12:31 AM, Mike <mike.cuttlers at gmail.com
<mailto:mike.cuttlers at gmail.com>> wrote:
OSM should follow international law.
There are a great deal of disputes here on this issue I agree, I
dont want to even go into them in detail.
my question is, do you care about the progress we have made, the
community building and the evangalism of osm to the people on
the ground who happen to live in this place? We can discuss all
day about the legal side of if they have the right to exist, we
can discuss all day who was there first. the balkans is full of
people who were not there before, at some point all people came
to the balkans if you go by some theories, all people originated
from africa. So, lets not go into history too much here and
stick to the point of making useful maps.
I think the most important thing here at the moment is to create
an accurate and useful map of the situation on the ground.
The best thing is to get local people on the ground to
contribute to these maps.
We need to try and keep the people who are living in some area
and contributing to the maps happy.
Nice tirade on quite simple claim that OSM should follow
international law.
You want to make your friends happy. That is reasonable. But it is
not reasonable to do that on behalf of other people, who, your
people butchered and expelled from their homes.
It cannot be accepted thief to be rightful owner of what he stole.
Yes, it may be the fact that stolen item is in his possession but it
still does not mean that he owns it. You are the one who claim that
thief becomes owner of what he stole.
What about people who cannot go back to their homes because your
friend do not allow them to? Should not they be happy too? Do you
really think that it is right to allow renaming their homes just to
make happy people you are friend with? Where is objectivity there?
The only way to be rightful is to follow international law. And
international law says that Kosovo i Metohija is still in Serbia.
You cannot change that fact just because it will not make happy your
friends.
If the serbs in
Gračanicahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gra%C4%8Danica,_Kosovo
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gra%C4%8Danica,_Kosovo> want to
name everything cyrillic, it would not bother me, because that
would make them feel comfortable contributing to osm. I think we
need to work on getting people to contribute here.
Yes, right. For some reason you draw map of Kosovo i Metohija just
in areas where your friends Albanians live. Other areas are left
untouched as you are not interested in them. It is pretty clear that
you have data for whole territory of Kosovo i Metohija but you are
dealing only with parts that support your political intentions.
If Kosovo i
Metohija become independent in the future, then OSM should
allow it to be
treated as such on maps.
Well last I checked they are independent, if not by your view
point, I dont know when you were there last. I flew in last in
nov 11 for the conference we organized there, also to promote
openstreetmap http://www.flossk.org/en/blog/sfk11
<http://www.flossk.org/en/blog/sfk11> and it was
still independent. I have regular conversations with the team
there and they did not tell me that they lost it. In fact I did
not see any serbian border guards, serbian signs or anything on
my visit, all say republic of kosovo.
So what? You organized conference to claim that Kosovo i Metohija is
independent, and that is it. It must be as You say so? Again, are
you serious? There is no international agreement that recognizes
Kosovo i Metohija as independent country. It is very clear that
status of Kosovo i Metohija is yet to be decided.
What happens now is that OSM is abused for
political misinterpretations not just of status of that
territory, but on
language, culture and population structure.
Well if we let you get your way, you will render the map useless
in that area, you will scare off the people we have attracted so
far and then you will be sitting on an out of date copy of your
"Kosovo i Metohija" map with no one to use it or appreciate it,
except maybe from outside of kosovo.
This is not true. You objectivity is clearly compromised. You are
advocating for Albanians, that is obvious. The only difference in
language use in time before war in Kosovo i Metohija and now is that
then, anyone who lived there could use his language, and now, only
Albanian is desired with intention to deny existence of any other
language or nation. You are clearly working to make it happen.
I have not problem Albanian language is used there. It was freely
used for decades before the war. Problem is that now you are
advocating only albanian language to be used ignoring fact that
national structure in nowadays Kosovo i Metohija is result of
killing and expelling almost everyone who was not Albanian.
For now, Kosovo i Metohija is part of Serbia and OSM should
reflect that,
including using historically appropriate names on OSM map.
We are working on that and I have done my best. Also on
wikipedia I have tried to include the serbian and albanian
names, also the local bosnian and turkish names of things. On
the wikipedia we had to fight even for that because in the ideas
of the people who are living back in 1988, the other names have
no place in "greater serbia". There are elements who do not want
to allow for people to use thier local names.
What are you talking about? Wikipedia allows anyone to write in
anything in language he wants. There is Wikipedia section in
Albanian language.
Now that is the point here, as an outsider and a researcher I am
interested in both sides of the story so I can debunk myths on
both sides. And in the balkan region, everyone is full of a very
personal and subjective history and viewpoint that does not mesh
with the others.
Your acting shows that you took side and you are supporting truth
you choose to be truth. I am not advocationg for Serbian side. That
is just an issue in this discussion, but I think I was pretty much
clear in advocating principle of following international law instead
of being biased toward any party. That should rule for any similar
situation.
You are the one who openly support one side and work in manner to
make official claims that are not official.
If Albanian contributors from Kosovo i Metohija are
threatening to leave
OSM, then so be it.
they are not threatening, I am warning you that it will be very
hard to continue my work in improving the map there and
teambuilding if some reckless people continue to renaming
everyhing and try and roll back the clock to 1988.
Where did you get that year of 1988? We are talking about events
from 1999 and toward today. That is when almost all non Albanian
population on Kosovo i Metohija is killed or expelled, and forceful
use of Albanian language begun.
The best thing would be to get the local people all over the
balkans to work on their little bit of the map where they live
and they feel comfortable.
Sure, then why don't you start from your own country? Why do you
went to foreign country to do that. Make an example forcing that on
your own people.
Map of Kosovo i Metohija is actually drawn
mostly by foreigners like Mike Dupont, who work for their
governments (or
NGO's) of for the Albanian government and use OSM to
advocate political
aspirations of their governments.
Wait and please stop right there. the NGO that I founded,
flossk.org <http://flossk.org> is a totally independant and
private thing. I do not work for it, I get no salary. I do not
work for any government whatsoever. I dont know where you have
gotten your information from. We have been working to promote
openstreetmap, wikipedia, linux, firefox, creative commons etc
in kosovo. No matter what you think about the people there, I
hope you can appreciate this effort. No matter what you might
call the country etc, the people there are benefiting from this
and osm is benefiting from it as well.
It is easy to see that all your work is targeted toward your
Albanian friends. You do not even recognize that there are people
who are not Albanians living in Kosovo i Metohija. Yes, yous say you
do, but your work shows otherwise. Your work started 10 years after
they killed and expelled almost all non Albanian population and you
dare to claim that they have the right to claim that their land,
support them and advocate for them?
Again, are you serious?
It is obvious you do not have a clue about Kosovo i Metohija. You
decided to take one side and now you are working to support it
neglecting law, justice and facts.
My view is that OSM should not allow you or anyone else to abuse it
for such political activism. Noone should have right to do what you
do, neither for mapping Kosovo not for any other map anywhere else.
If you insist to do that, then you should do it at your homeland,
and to your own people.
--
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