[OSM-talk] Persian/Arabian Gulf Tagging

[Mostafa Ahangarha]

Hi

Regarding the recent cases reported here which contains sensitive and 
abusive languages, I would condemn it for sure. As far as I know active 
Iranian people in OSM, such activities have nothing to do with us. I 
cannot talk on behalf of the rest of the community and not sure what we 
can do to satisfy others.

But what I can see clearly is that in order to condemn such vandalism, 
some of our Arab friends are attacking Iranians in a very racist manner. 
There are many groups who enjoy to escalate such tensions. I can even 
say not all of them have anything to do with nationalism even. Not 
necessarily they are Iranian as well. Finding some abusive word and 
making account and do such things is very much easy. I can make 100 
accounts with some abusive username and do harm in OSM map in Iran and 
then myself come and start shouting at Arabs and say Arabs are such and 
such.

We cannot control those accounts but can control the language we 
ourselves use. So let's don't mess up here with each other and instead, 
work together to do the right thing to keep OSM up, both technically and 
ethically.

Again I express my extreme condemnation regarding the recent edits and 
reject any affiliation between such edits and out community's ethics. 
Yet I invite everyone to recognize the informal nature of OSM community 
and impossibility of having control on who edits what. We need to work 
together hand in hand to keep things right.

-- 
Regards,
Mostafa Ahangarha