Interesting. I sent a message two days ago with a very similar topic,
but it hasn’t yet found a moderator to accept it (or reject it). I’m
sending it again here, maybe it can help with the discussion.
Regards,
Martin.
Hi,
Some context first. So there has been this changeset that triggered
some discussions: https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/77845837
Changeset comments in not a great place for discussion, so I suggest
that we continue here. (Thanks @SomeoneElse for the link! ☺)
First, here is what is not an issue: the language-specific “name” tags
(“name:en”, “name:de”, etc.), and the “name” tags where there is a clear
default language (because the place uses a particular language, because
it is in a place using this particular language, etc.).
The issue comes in places where there is not a particular language, like
oceans, most seas, or places like Antartica. In most of these places,
the “name” tag is actually using the English name.
The issue is that English, despite being a de facto internal language,
is felt by some communities as a non-neutral choice, given all the
inequalities it yields among people in the world, given its complexity,
etc. The Esperanto community is particularly criticising the choice of
the English language as an international language. I don’t think that
anyone wants to fight about whether English is neutral here: this is not
my question. I’m writing this message in English as the title of this
mailing list displays in English, but I’m willing to rephrase the
question in Esperanto.
The question I would like to ask is about the relevance of having a
“name” tag in places where there is no default language—knowing that all
the “name:en”, “name:eo”, etc. are already there. I can imagine that
some renderers might expect to always be a tag “name”, and I wonder how
fixable this is (especially in the cases where there is a localised
name). If you have any argumented pointer about this, I would be
interested.
As far as I know, the wiki doesn’t state anything about English being
the default language for the name tag:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Names It thus doesn’t feel like this
question has already been discussed. However, I never participated in
the main OSM mailing list and thus missed any such discussions if they
already took place. If so, please give me an argumented link.
I tried to formulate the question to avoid having to fight over English
vs Esperanto or any debate like that. Please do not fight because of
this message: I know how harmful such debates can be ☹
Regards,
Martin.
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