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

[Sarp Hangişi]

Resending my previous email because the mailing list can't display html emails.

> Based on that (and unless anyone can dig out more compelling evidence),
> I don't think that the name "Null Island" has "cut through" to the
> general public yet

There are videos on YouTube with millions of views that are about or
mention null island. For example this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c1am8NSx_s mentioning the place has
over 3 million views, and this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjvIpI-1w84 about the place has over 2
million views. I think 3 million people from around the world is
enough to for it to have "cut through" to the general public

Kind Regards,
Sarp


On Thu, 6 Jan 2022 at 12:00, Andy Townsend <ajt1047 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 03/01/2022 02:14, Emil Linus Albrecht wrote:
> > This is a little outdated, yes, but debate has just sparked in the OSM
> > World Discord server about a deletion of something, some might
> > consider the base of everything: Null Island (Node #9028040143).
> >
> >
>
> A bit of the history of what happened might provide a bit of context.
>
> The history of the monitoring station can be seen at:
>
> https://map.atownsend.org.uk/maps/osm-deep-history/#/node/3815077900
>
> (I've used that version of the "deep history" so that everyone can
> easily see comments and replies on editors' changesets)
>
> It was originally added as a seamark, then went through various tags
> before becoming established as a "man_made=monitoring_station".
> Occasionally the wikipedia link "en:Null Island" was added and then
> removed.  Fairly regularly it got deleted by people clearing up other
> rubbish that had been added at latitude 0, longitude 0 and then
> reinstated.  In July 2021 it got its own wikipedia page* and shortly
> afterwards the "locality" for "null island" was added as
> https://map.atownsend.org.uk/maps/osm-deep-history/#/node/9028040143 .
>
> More generally, on names:
>
> Normally, names are assigned by locals, although the language used may
> no longer be spoken locally.  Where I live in the UK there's a River
> Ouse (which apparently just means "water" in old Celtic languages) and a
> River Foss (Latin for "ditch").  Sometimes names are more recent - When
> the canal was built between Amsterdam and Haarlem in what is now the
> Netherlands, "Halfweg" was half-way along it.  Someone called it that
> first, but the name stuck, and now everyone calls the village that got
> established there that.
>
> Sometimes names don't stick around - in Chesterfield in the UK the
> "Terminus" was the end of the tram near
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/241925109 .  The name on the nearby
> pub survived the tram by many years, but now only survives as a bowls
> club named after the pub up the road:
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/418090482 .  Everyone called the
> roundabout that https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/816931479 was part of
> "Donkin's Island" ("island" means "roundabout" in
> Chesterfield/Sheffield) for many years - Bryan Donkin was a company that
> had a building with a large sign overlooking it, which has since been
> demolished.  Sheffield's "Hole in the Road" (see
> https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/retro-day-sheffields-hole-road-was-filled-462529
> ) was similar - neither name was "official", but pretty much everyone
> used that name exclusively.
>
> "Null island" is a bit like that - someone invented the name (I've no
> idea who myself, but have heard people suggest Natural Earth or Esri),
> and (at least within the "map nerd" community), it's stuck.
>
> The question is - has "Null Island" reached that level of familiarity
> within the world at large?  In order to find out, you'd normally ask the
> locals.  A classic example of this is
> https://web.archive.org/web/20190225133138/http://ma3t.co.uk/euanmills/euanmills/tifd.html
> - someone walked down the A10 in London asking locals where they were.
> Unfortunately, it's difficult to do this in the middle of the Atlantic.
> People who might know are people who maintain the buoy**
> https://www.brest.ird.fr/pirata/pirata_cruises.php , but there's no
> mention of "null island" there, or in the French "what we did on site"
> text in the linked PDF.
>
> Based on that (and unless anyone can dig out more compelling evidence),
> I don't think that the name "Null Island" has "cut through" to the
> general public yet***, although it might do in time.
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Andy ("SomeoneElse" and "SomeoneElse_Revert" in the changeset links above)
>
> * though "The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general
> notability guideline": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_Buoy .  The
> fact that a verifiable real-world thing is "less notable" than an
> imaginary concept says quite a lot about Wikipedia...
>
> ** this was dug out by someone in the Discord channel - thanks!
>
> *** and I'm not convinced that "Bliss Hill"
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2327750884 has either, though you can
> find actual 3rd-party references for the name:
> https://gizmodo.com/no-the-famous-windows-xp-hill-is-not-on-fire-1819845152
> .
>
>
>
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