[OSM-talk] OSMF makes a political decision where should be a technical solution?

[Oleksiy Muzalyev]

It seems to be a good idea to show the disputed boundaries in a 
different style. For example, if a captain of a see ship visits a port 
in Crimea and then one in Ukraine, as far as I know, he may have legal 
problems and the ship could be delayed in Ukraine. A captain from say 
the Southeast Asia could be not aware of local politics. For instance, 
who from us in Europe knows if there is a dispute between Bolivia and 
Paraguay? But at least he may see on the map that this boundary is 
disputed and be somehow forewarned.

On the MapQuest map one can see clearly the ground de facto border 
between Ukraine and Crimea, so a driver can slow down before the 
checkpoint, avoiding the risk of hitting the concrete blocks in darkness 
at high speed, if the de facto border were not shown at all. But the 
border has got somewhat different style.

The situation with Crimea is not settled on the ground either. The 
immense North Crimean Canal [1] is closed and does not supply water to 
the peninsula. What causes heavy loses both to the agriculture at the 
Crimea and to the companies in Ukraine which maintain the canal. A lot 
of people suffer due to this situation. Displaying the border as 
disputed, i.e in a distinctive style, could be an additional stimulus to 
the participants of the conflict to attempt to find a permanent peaceful 
solution.

Though I do realize that it could be time consuming for volunteers to 
rewrite programs and redesign databases for particular cases.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Crimean_Canal

Best regards,
Oleksiy

On 24.11.18 16:09, Andy Townsend wrote:
> ...As another example have a look at https://www.mapquest.com/ and 
> browse to Western Sahara - there are at least 3 different styles of 
> boundaries shown there that represent de facto and de jure country 
> boundaries.  Those are technical decisions made by the people making 
> those maps (in this case Mapbox, based on OSM data).
...
> it is widely internationally recognised that Russia now controls Crimea.