If I were doing the map of that region and had to explain to Sudanese and South-Sudanese my decision, I'd either add both borders (your suggestion), or create a special entity (my suggestion). But for those who are not involved in the conflict, is the area part of Sudan or South-Sudan? I guess they would say "it is effectively controlled by Sudan, but it's also pretty much a conflict zone still, so we can't say for sure".
Today, from a practical perspective, a letter to anyone in Abyei would probably be addressed to Sudan, a phone call would dial Sudan's area code, a visitor would go through Sudanese immigration. So maybe it's in Sudan. But the conflict is not over and few would dare to describe it as such without making someone angry. Moreover, if you had a Sudanese and a South-Sudanese mapping the area in OSM, that may lead to a nasty edit war. Maybe it's part of both countries then. In that case, tools like Nominatim should reflect that - but Nominatim currently thinks that Abyei is in South Sudan (possibly making some non-technical Sudanese users a bit uneasy). Overlapping administrative borders should then be a basic assumption of every app - and they're not, since they almost always are administrative "subdivisions". An overlapping administrative border of equal admin_level would make more sense if both parties were friendly to each other and collaborating within the area. But then I think nobody would describe these as "disputed" territories. Abyei could be simply Abyei, an area lying inside a "disputed territory between Sudan and South-Sudan". I guess everybody would agree with that statement, even those involved in the conflict. Is the disputed territory in Sudan? Not for the South-Sudanese. Is in South-Sudan? Not for the Sudanese. And for those outside? Well, we'd be pretending to be the United Nations if we made that decision. But is the area faring independently? No, so we represent the claim conflict using the "claimed" role in each country's defining relation. Extending that to Antarctica, one may ask: are the overlapping territories claimed by Argentina, Chile and UK part of any of these? Well, if you're not Argentinian, nor Chilean nor British, you'd probably be confused (as I am) and prefer to describe them as claimed territories (as Wikipedia does). Non-overlapping claimed areas would not currently present such conflicts of nationalism, but they're still described using words such as "claimed", "overseas" and "dependencies", implying a significant separation between mainland and everything else. It seems easier and perhaps fairer to fit them into the "rule of exclusion" than into the "rule of inclusion" (from the point of view of a librarian cataloguing places), and I believe it simplifies app development too. On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 2:48 PM, Michael Krämer <ohr...@gmail.com> wrote: > Am 23.12.2013 11:56, schrieb Jonathan: > >> 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? > > > An example is the area of Abyei [1] which is disputed between Sudan and > South Sudan. This is tagged to belong to both countries. So the southern > border is part of the relation for Sudan and the northern one for South > Sudan. The standard rendering creates national borders around it [2]. > This is not perfect but probably good enough. > > >> 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? > > > Personally I think tat following the on-the-ground rule in case of a > dispute we should map the de-facto border. But I know that this also > raises problems. For example I remember a posting some time ago about > this being problematic in India. > > Michael (user Ohr) > > > [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abyei > [2] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=10/9.7267/28.4409 > > > _______________________________________________ > Tagging mailing list > Tagging@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging -- 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 Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging