[OSM-talk] Was the deletion of Null Island reasonable?

[stevea]

Null Island is a “place” (a real place) just as much as the North Pole.  While “nature” defines the Pole(s) and humans define “half” of Null Island (not the equator, but the arbitrary nature of longitude and any particular meridian, let alone one agreed to be “Prime”), both are localities on Earth.  In both cases, there is “nothing” there (well, a nautical buoy is in the vicinity in one case), but that doesn’t mean these are “fictional” places, they are no such thing.  OSM should map them with at least place=locality just as it does for thousands of other places which are “widely known to be named this” (and there is nothing there, too).  Other tags may be appropriate, but please, let us agree these places are not fictional, they are real.  There is "nothing there,” at Null Island, to be sure, but is really a place.  Our “briefest, mere whisper, zero dimensional” of a data structure, a node tagged appropriately, is correct.