[OSM-talk] OTG rule, borders & mountains existing | Re: Crimea situation - on the ground

[Rory McCann]

On 07.02.20 20:12, stevea wrote:
> A well-known example is (national, other) boundaries, which
> frequently do not exist "on the ground,"
National borders don't exist on the ground? huh? Have you ever actually
_crossed_ an international border? I assure you they exist on the
ground. From large infrastructure, to changes in the paint colour on
roads, one can nearly always *see* where a border is.

> Other examples include large bodies of water and mountain ranges.
> I've lived on the Pacific coast most of my life and been to dozens of
> beaches, but never once on any beach have I seen a sign which reads
> "Pacific Ocean."  Same with no signs at the edge of or in the middle
> of "Rocky Mountains" or "The Alps."  (I've been, and I haven't seen).
> Yet, OSM maps oceans and mountain ranges.  How do we know their names
> without anything on the ground?
We ask people there. We look at books, at maps, at whether there is a 
detailed Wikipedia article on the topic, do are travel books published 
that refer to this area as that, do organisations that cover that area 
use that term. We look to see if the name is _used in reality_.

That's the "on the ground rule". IMO "on the ground" refers to 
"observable reality".