[OSM-talk] Crimea situation - on the ground

[Rory McCann]

It is true that government A might have one opinion, and government B 
might have another, and Provisional Autonomous Republic of C might have 
another opinion.

But there can be another way. We go there, and we see what nearly 
everyone there calls it. We look at the words on the signs. We look at 
the name of the organisations based there (“Transport for London”). We 
walk down the street and ask 100 people what the name of this city is. 
We listen into conversations there, and see if there's a majority name 
that people use when they talk to each other about the city

And the answer to that is “London”.

In OSM, we could tag that "the opinion of the UK government is that this 
city is called London", and "the opinion of the French government is 
that this this city is called Londres", and "the commonly used name for 
this city by the vast majority of people who live there is London".

We should map the third option with the `name` tag.

On 07.02.20 20:56, Colin Smale wrote:
> Many things we think of as "facts" are in fact somewhat subjective. 
> Things have a name or some attribute "according to" some authority. 
> London "is not" London, it is "called" London according to local people, 
> government etc. But the same place is "called" Londres, according to a 
> different authority, namely French-speakers; both points of view are 
> equally valid, but only within their intended context.
> 
> In the case of Crimea, two different authorities have different views of 
> the jurisdiction to which it belongs. That is a fact, that we can safely 
> map. We can represent the border in one place "according to Russia" and 
> in another place "according to Ukraine" without taking sides. It is then 
> down to the renderer/consumer which source is preferred. If we don't 
> stop taking sides, well, we are taking sides - whatever our arguments to 
> support our choice. We will never "win" that one.
> 
> I am applying a bit of data management here; every data item should have 
> a provenance, value domain, validity period etc. The "truth" is always 
> only relative to a particular frame of reference.