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

[stevea]

On Jan 9, 2022, at 11:01 PM, Maarten Deen <mdeen at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> ...I think the whole discussion is pointless and fruitless and will probably never come to consensus. There will always be people on either side of the argument and it is likely that at some point one of the sides will be bored with the discussion, meaning the other side will say there is no opposition will claim to have won the argument.

Well, thanks for that, Maarten, I mean that sincerely.

The discussion is, quite precisely "pointless" in that the node was deleted, and some (myself, perhaps the Original Poster...) feel this might have been an error, as seen in the question mark of the Subject.  On a serious note, I don't think it is pointless at all:  some of us have made good points that there are valid reasons for including our origin as a single node.

>> Null island is unique.  It is OSM's "origin."  There is only one of these.
> 
> There are many things unique. The question is: does it serve a purpose. Does a node being there provide some service that is needed and can not otherwise be made.

I've said it serves the purpose of "ah, HERE is the origin every single datum in our map uses."  That really is something.  It's the intersection of two axes on graph paper.  It's "Begin Here."  There is some sense to denoting this.  One service (I noted) is that it really can support certain kinds of error detection, as happened to me once when I inadvertently "bumped into" Null Island when a search I was doing was overly broad, and its presence in my proto-data allowed me to catch the error of my ways (heh) before I uploaded.  This is a good thing.  There may be others we have yet to foresee.

>> I don't see it as a big deal to say "this might feel exceptional to some of us, as it isn't a real place in some existential sense...but this is where OSM says Earth Starts Here."  That's all Null Island is.
> 
> It is not where _OSM_ says Earth Starts Here. The idea of the equator and the 0 meridian are not OSM's, so it is not OSM that says the Earth Starts Here. If that is an expression at all. If someone were to ask me where earth starts I would say the north pole. Because that is the top.

Well, it IS where OSM says Earth Starts Here, along with a variety of other coordinate systems / maps / mathematical models of Earth, going back centuries (even millennia) with a or "the" Prime Meridian and the natural intersection with the Equator, an obvious natural feature of our fine planet.  We, the Contributors of OSM, really are the final arbiters of whether we expressly denote where our Origin is.  As I've said, I'll be saddened if not, and there IS a case to be made for re-instating it:  it isn't "fictional," it provides a service (at least one — the potential for error reduction, possibly others) and it can remain a "one off," a single whisper of a datum that states what it is, and no more.

The poles are fine places in their own senses and for their particular purposes of what they are, but as noted, they do wander and they are not OSM's (mathematical, geographical...) origin.

I've gotten loquacious and repetitive, so I'll stop here.