After remembering that the country of Ecuador is named after the equator, this got me thinking: Is an object (like a way or multilinestring) representing the equator necessary? Editors commenting on previous edits of mine have told me to ask the community first, so that’s what I’m doing now.
I think no
What do you think it would be necessary for?
Ecuador’s name would be explained with a tag something like name:etymology:wikidata=Q23538 if necessary or useful
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No, because it’s something that you can always compute where it is (at latitude 0). You don’t need an object in OSM for that.
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Why are you so intent on creating all these huge objects in OSM?
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The equator is the dividing line between the northern and southern hemispheres. Thus, its latitude is 0°. Because it’s the dividing line between the hemispheres, certain behaviors change. For instance, the seasons are flipped, people in the southern hemisphere see a different set of constellations than people in the north, hurricane/cyclone/storm/whatevers change their direction of spin based on what hemispheres they’re in (the Corriolis effect), and actually, the difference in names I just gave depends partly on what hemisphere they formed in. Finally, I read somewhere that some countries create monuments demarcating the equator (though, unlike administrative boundaries, the equator’s position does not change because someone was off by a few hundred feet or meters). Also, I learned that there are several lines representing the antemeridian (180° from the Prime Meridian), so I thought to myself, “why not do something similar to the equator (after community discussion first)?”
I already did this 
How could I do this? Please enlighten me.
In this case, please read above. In general, it’s because I believe that a certain object can and should be better represented as either a line segment or a closed polygon. I usually only do this if the object question at least has a clear outline that exists (i.e., a coastline separating a continent from an ocean). Also, I don’t know if this off-topic, but it looks like someone (not me) created several ways to represent the antemeridian.
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Do you mean this edit that you made?
That way exists for the purpose of coastline processing. Congratulations, you’ve broken the coastline by editing something you didn’t understand. It’s a closure segment that handles the fact that ways can’t wrap over the edges of the map. Please put it back to the way it was before.
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And boundary=timezone ?
Anyone with a watch on their wrist as a minimal tool can calculate it.
I wonder if there is something similar for the parallel of the Equator: man_made=meridian_marker and Way: Greenwich Meridian (268533450) | OpenStreetMap .
Same as boundary=timezone
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Nope. Those ways were there before I made those changes. After realizing that this was literally the edge of the map, I reverted those edits.
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this is a simplification though. It is a gradual change, if you are north the equator but relatively close and move south of it, the portion of the sky you see won’t change significantly, but if the distances are big, there will be significant change. It is a not magic line over which you step and everything changes, not comparable to a border etc. Its exact position has no significance on the ground (unless it is painted or otherwise visualized, which may be often the case, and then it can be mapped).
And it is implicit in any map, if we were to map the equator, what would stop us from mapping more graticules?
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It depends completely on what you’re doing with OSM data. At its most basic, “checking if a point is in the northern hemisphere” just involves checking if the latitude is positive.
If you absolutely want to include the equator as a “fake OSM object” for use when creating e.g. a map you can easily do that too - you can compute it on the fly (since you literally know the definition of it) or you can merge in a “fake OSM file” containing that and any other stuff you want to include in the same way.
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Here’s a GeoJSON you can load into any map powered by MapLibre, Mapbox GL, Leaflet, or OpenLayers:
{
"type": "Feature",
"properties": {
"name": "Ecuador;Equador;Équateur;Ikweta;Equator;Dhulbare;خط الاستواء;އީކުއޭޓަރ;Khatulistiwa"
},
"geometry": {
"coordinates": [
[-180, 0],
[180, 0]
],
"type": "LineString"
}
}
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But there are 
that can automatically calculate where you are on the planet and adjust the dial to show the local time, incl DST:rofl:
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Yes: