---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: paul youlten <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 7:05 AM Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] OSM & Political problems (Re: China cracks down onillegal online map services to protect state security) To: Tom Chance <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
While "edit wars" might upset a few, very passionate editors who take absolutist positions on geography, politics and history - such conflicts are not totally negative because they are often picked up by the local media and promoted to a wider audience. For example the OSM edit war (or skirmish) in Northern Cyprus a few months ago could have got more people interested in OSM if we had done a press release about it. Equally, getting banned isn't always a bad thing. Wikipedia has been blocked by the Great Firewall of China several times - every time it happens Wikipedia gets a lot of media attention - which brings more people and editors to the wiki, the community feels like they are protecting free speech - which helps their motivation. So if (or maybe when) OSM gets blocked by the authorities in China we should all celebrate. Paul Y On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 3:29 AM, Tom Chance <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:14:00 +0100, "Bernt M. Johnsen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > I think this will be an increasing problem as OSM gains more momentum. > > For some people, national boundaries have huge political importance, > > and we should perhaps give some thought on how to deal with this > > before we get an edit war wrt Taiwan is a country or wether Kosovo is > > a part of Serbia or not. > > > > Wikipedia has these problems and deals with them (see e.g. this > > article with corresponding discussions: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide), but since OSM is more > > like a sea of data than a set of separate articles, I assume it migt > > be more complex to deal with in OSM. > > > > I also assume (could not find anything in the wiki) that OSM ideally > > should be politically neutral. > > Of course the problem is that there is usually no such thing as > "neutrality", you either call Taiwan a country or you don't and both > positions are politically charged. The closest we could come would be, for > example, to call Taiwan an island and part of China since the UN > recognises > it as such. > > Kind regards, > Tom > > > _______________________________________________ > talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk > -- Tel: +44(0) 7814 517 807 -- Tel: +44(0) 7814 517 807
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