Note: This post was drafted with the assistance of AI tools. I have reviewed it and made every effort to verify the information and sources.
Hello,
I found that five place=country nodes currently have no wikidata tag. Each node had a stable Wikidata ID in its previous history, and the tags appear to have been removed while language names were being edited.
I am not experienced with editing OpenStreetMap, so I would appreciate help from an experienced mapper to verify whether these tags should be restored and, if appropriate, make the edits.
Affected nodes
| Country | Node | Previous tag | Versions | Removal changeset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| China | 424313582 | wikidata=Q148 |
v117 to v118 | 181051453 |
| Bangladesh | 432424937 | wikidata=Q902 |
v98 to v99 | 181051453 |
| Bhutan | 424311028 | wikidata=Q917 |
v87 to v88 | 181051453 |
| United Arab Emirates | 424310703 | wikidata=Q878 |
v80 to v81 | 181051453 |
| South Africa | 424298167 | wikidata=Q258 |
v94 to v95 | 179811511 |
History evidence
The China node history shows that v117 contained wikidata=Q148, while v118 has no wikidata tag.
The exact difference is:
Removed: wikidata=Q148
Added: name:wal=Chaynaa
Changed: none
The same pattern appears for Bangladesh, Bhutan, and the United Arab Emirates in changeset 181051453. South Africa lost wikidata=Q258 in changeset 179811511.
The existing discussion on changeset 181051453 already asks why the Wikidata tags were removed, but it has not received a reply.
Current OSM query
This Overpass query currently returns exactly the five nodes listed above:
[out:json][timeout:60];
node["place"="country"][!"wikidata"];
out meta tags;
Downstream effect
The missing tags affect country labels in the open source Protomaps Basemap.
The generator uses the OSM wikidata tag to look up curated country zoom ranges. The relevant files in the protomaps/basemaps repository are:
tiles/src/main/java/com/protomaps/basemap/layers/Places.java
tiles/src/main/resources/places.csv
The default country range is z5 through z8. The curated China entry is Q148,1,5,-1, which places the feature in z1 through z5 tiles.
With wikidata=Q148 missing, China falls back to z5 through z8. Current Protomaps v4 tiles contain no China country-label feature at z0 through z4. The same fallback affects the other four nodes.
This rendering impact is supporting evidence. The proposed OSM correction is based on the node histories and the Wikidata IDs that existed before the two changesets.
Other removed tags
The same edits also removed:
wikipedia=ar:الإمارات العربية المتحدةfrom the United Arab Emirates node.wikipedia=en:South Africafrom the South Africa node.
These tags should be reviewed separately before restoration.
Questions
- Is restoring the five historical
wikidatatags appropriate under current OSM tagging practice? - Could an experienced mapper verify the current node versions and make the restoration if appropriate?
- Should the two removed
wikipediatags also be restored, or should they be handled separately?
Thank you.
