I am not qualified to answer any of these questions as I've never got
involved in editing boundaries in OSM however it does raise an
interesting wider question, which is, how do we map all territories that
are claimed by one country or another but not internationally recognised?
Some territories are officially recognised by the UN as being under
dispute but then there are others where the UN recognise one nations
claim over another's but it has never been enforced. First example that
springs to mind is the land that Israel has taken from the Palestinians
and the UN demand that Israel roles back it's current borders. Do we
map what is on the ground, which seems to be the common argument, or do
we map what is widely recognised as the official situation?
Sorry for not proffering any answers but more questions ;-)
Jonathan
http://bigfatfrog67.me
On 23/12/2013 04:33, Fernando Trebien wrote:
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.
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