[OSM-talk] Can wikidata links help fight name inflation?

[Maarten Deen]

On 2015-05-28 11:30, Komяpa wrote:

> How do we cover this use case in OpenStreetMap, with its
> eager-to-revert-names-in-languages-I-don't-speak users?

I'm genuinely curious: How do people in Russia search for places that 
are not in Russia? If you search for London, do you search for London or 
do you search for Лондон?
I know I am not searching for Москва, Новосибирск, or Владивосток when I 
need Moscow, Novosibirsk or Wladiwostok. I can't even type those 
characters. Wouldn't it be normal that placenames are transliterated?
So I find it strange that properly transliterated names get removed from 
the database. To me that seems a very western[*]-centric view of things.

[*] short for "countries that use the latin alphabet"

And yes, looking at the OSM map of Russia or China I am lost. I can not 
read it. Okay, cyrillic I can read a little, Moscow I can find, but I 
can not find Beijing on the map, I have to use the search box. And when 
I do and look at the map, I can not read what places are around it.
I think this is the biggest flaw of the OSM map that needs to be fixed. 
And for that you need transliterated names.

Maarten