Hello everyone, I'm not sure if I should post this question here. If not, please point me in a better direction.
I was optimizing some boundaries in Antarctica and then realized some countries had included as part of their country borders their claimed territories in Antarctica, namely: Australia, Norway and Argentina. Now, the Antarctic Treaty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty) does not state that these countries have actual jurisdiction nor sovereignty over these areas (it does not deny it also). Additionally, the wiki says that, for clarity, a country in OSM should be equivalent to an ISO-3166 entity (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Admin_level#National). None of Antartica's claimed territories are ISO-3166 entities (so they're not countries and are probably part of other countries - so far so good), but Antartica is, so Antarctica is a country in OSM - a strange one whose subdivisions do not belong to itself (but that's ok in theory). Oddity aside, I wouldn't worry about adding Chile's and NZ's territories to their countries, but if I added UK's, then it naturally follows that we also would have to add all other British overseas territories to UK - but we can't, because most of them are ISO-3166 entities, therefore, countries. So how do we solve this conundrum fairly? Should we... - add the claimed territories to the respective countries, except UK? - add all claimed territories, but no UK overseas territories besides the Antarctic one? - override the ISO-3166 rule and add overseas territories to UK? - remove claimed territories from the borders of Australia, Norway and Argentina, and perhaps create relations for overseas territories of each of these countries, like they apparently do in France (http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/2186658)? I think the last solution may be superior because: - AFAIK no treaty gives sovereignty/jurisdiction/special rights to any of the claiming countries over any of these claimed territories - less confusing (it always seems weird to create exceptions on established patterns), particularly because: --- I believe almost nobody thinks of those territories when thinking of the claiming countries; and --- I think a letter sent to any of these territories wouldn't normally be addressed to Norway, Argentina or Australia - consequently, it may help to avoid future edit wars It may, however, create problems to applications that assume that these areas are states/provinces/etc. of their respective countries. On the other hand, I believe that the impact would be minimal and that many other common things in OSM force programmers to create exceptions in their code more often. What do you think? Am I missing something fundamental? I know I'm meddling in other nations business, but I'm curious since I stumbled upon the problem. -- Fernando Trebien +55 (51) 9962-5409 "The speed of computer chips doubles every 18 months." (Moore's law) "The speed of software halves every 18 months." (Gates' law) _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
