Something a little bit different: The Republic of Molossia is a self-declared "micro-nation" located near Dayton, NV, landlocked by the United States. The nation claims full sovereignty from the United States; however, it is recognized by neither the United States, nor any other country on Earth, as an independent nation. You have probably heard about it before, since it is one of the best-known examples of such a micro-nation in the US.
Within the past few months, this "nation" has popped into OSM, complete with sloppily implemented "admin_level=2" and "boundary=national" tags, view-able here: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/39.32281/-119.53908. My discussion point is whether this is a valid use of these tags. A handful of quick searches about this topic didn't turn up anything for me, so I'm assuming no precedent has been set yet. It is worth noting that this is not the only micro-nation in the US. I'm not inclined to think these tags are valid. Otherwise, there's nothing stopping me from calling my backyard its own nation, slapping together a wikipedia article, and entering it into OSM as a full-fledged nation. However, since they are still geographically based entities of interest to the public, I think they are worth mapping There is a proposal for disputed boundaries, but I don't think that's valid either since there isn't really a dispute. The nation has gone unacknowledged by the United States, and nothing has gone through the legal process between the two nations (that I'm aware of) that could constitute a "dispute". No other boundary tag is really applicable, maybe a new "boundary=micronation" would work? De facto, US law still applies in these "micronations", along with the law of whatever jurisdictions the micronation belongs to, so I don't think an admin_level tag is applicable. _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
