What’s the policy on dependent territories? I’ve noticed that most of the time they’re included as part of their owning country, but some aren’t. For example, Gibraltar is not part of the UK, but Puerto Rico is part of the US. I understand that the British Overseas Territories haven’t been legally incorporated into the UK, but using that same logic the only incorporated US territory is Palmyra Atoll.
Thanks in advance.
What’s the policy on dependent territories?
Essentially, “it depends”. Different territories have different models, and while OSM does it’s best to tag the real world as it exists, there will always be edge cases. Generally speaking what’s in OSM is probably the “best compromise” between different points of view. It’s not black and white - all of the examples in your sig (Crimea, Taiwan, Jerusalem, Kosovo) “should be” in different coutries depending on who you ask. Whether Kosovo should be a “country” in OSM was discussed at length in these very forums, and the result was that a majority of people thought that it probably should be. You could make a similar case in other areas too - Somaliland is one such example, which currently isn’t a “country” in OSM.
For more information about disputed territories, see the OSMF policy https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/images/d/d8/DisputedTerritoriesInformation.pdf . If you think that a particular dependent territory is “wrong”, I’d suggest discussing it with the relevant community, and https://openstreetmap.community/ is a good way to find those.
Thanks for the informative reply.