It is true that government A might have one opinion, and government B
might have another, and Provisional Autonomous Republic of C might have
another opinion.
But there can be another way. We go there, and we see what nearly
everyone there calls it. We look at the words on the signs. We look at
the name of the organisations based there (“Transport for London”). We
walk down the street and ask 100 people what the name of this city is.
We listen into conversations there, and see if there's a majority name
that people use when they talk to each other about the city
And the answer to that is “London”.
In OSM, we could tag that "the opinion of the UK government is that this
city is called London", and "the opinion of the French government is
that this this city is called Londres", and "the commonly used name for
this city by the vast majority of people who live there is London".
We should map the third option with the `name` tag.
On 07.02.20 20:56, Colin Smale wrote:
Many things we think of as "facts" are in fact somewhat subjective.
Things have a name or some attribute "according to" some authority.
London "is not" London, it is "called" London according to local people,
government etc. But the same place is "called" Londres, according to a
different authority, namely French-speakers; both points of view are
equally valid, but only within their intended context.
In the case of Crimea, two different authorities have different views of
the jurisdiction to which it belongs. That is a fact, that we can safely
map. We can represent the border in one place "according to Russia" and
in another place "according to Ukraine" without taking sides. It is then
down to the renderer/consumer which source is preferred. If we don't
stop taking sides, well, we are taking sides - whatever our arguments to
support our choice. We will never "win" that one.
I am applying a bit of data management here; every data item should have
a provenance, value domain, validity period etc. The "truth" is always
only relative to a particular frame of reference.
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