Sealand in particular has a boundary=administrative border with admin_level=2. Should we treat micronations has a country, and if not, how should we map them? Personally I want to map them as a theme park because micronations are not countries* and they are depended on tourism to keep operations going.
*: yes, yes, micronations do have a lot of properties of a country, but they are called “micronations” for a reason
Context:
A micronation is a political entity whose representatives claim that they belong to an independent nation or sovereign state, but which lacks legal recognition by any sovereign state. Micronations are classified separately from de facto states and quasi-states; they are also not considered to be autonomous or self-governing as they lack the legal basis in international law for their existence. The activities of micronations are almost always trivial enough to be ignored rather than disputed by the established nations whose territory they claim—referred to in micronationalism as “macronations”.
Personally I agree with that too. But at OpenStreetMap discord an user said micronations should be mapped with “admin_level=2”, and we both figured that this issue should be settled down in the wider osm community.
I believe there needs to be a tagging that allows you to see if an area is in such a micronation. If we go by the on the mapping on the ground rule those areas are different than the nations they try to separate from, something that should be in the OSM data.
Using admin_level_2 is probably too much, giving them the staus of a normal country, and actively discouraged by the wiki: Tag:boundary=administrative - OpenStreetMap Wiki The wiki seems to recommend using admin_level=3 or 4 instead what isn’t an optimal solution either since those are not states or similiar but claiming to be independed, what makes them not fitting in the normal admin level hirachy in a country.
Mapping them as theme park is the worst option imo. While this may fit to some micronations such as Molossia this is not what other areas such as Sealand are. There are not masses of tourists taking trips to Sealands and enjoying the amenities there, it is a rather unwelcoming place. For a lot of Micronations the term protest camp would fit a lot better than tourist attraction. So tagging all Micronations as theme parks is the wrong approach.
You could tag them as disputed borders, but it isn’t really the border that is disputed but the whole country.
In my opinion we need a new tagging sheme for them, making it clear to all data users what these locations are without believing this is a spot for park rides or similiar. This would also end the edit wars that are going on about them.
The OSMF policy on disputed territories is here. I don’t believe any of these alleged “micronations” meet the criteria in that.
If you think that policy needs to be changed, get a community consensus (from within OSM) together to change it. We already have ways of mapping most of the ones that are relevant - Molossia is a tourist attraction, for example. Sealand’s just a bit of “land” of dubious ownership; not a “country” in any accepted sense.
Many other not-quite-countries-yet would be in the queue** before Sealand at al.
** Somaliland is one example. I suspect that OSM is correct here, but a case could be made.
This is clearly incorrect. It is not a real country and should not be mapped as one and will not be mapped as one, unless situation changes on the ground.
Even mapping it as a theme park or tourism attraction is dubious, unlike Molossia.
Otherwise someone will invent (or invented already) micronation that is 1 mm wide and goes across entire Russia or something equally silly.
Sealand may qualify as place=locality I guess? Maybe place=locality locality=micronation
But that would be valid only for ones with some actual recognisability of name.
(Use Mapillary to understand the incredible work the mapper has put into it; I even have a little respect for the creativity and enormous perseverance, but don’t like exaggeration!)
And this is what happened afterwards:
(So always be careful with the guard dogs on the other side of the border!)
edit 1: Better working link-1,
edit 2: @ZeLonewolf Think, this is a good moment for the Popcorn-Emoji!
Just being curious here, and probably reinventing the wheel: who decides what is a country, and how? UN comes to mind, but also the fact that some countries are recognized by a few other countries but not all. Could there be a way that OSM can rely on an outside authority, or to account for multiple authories? e.g self:admin_level=2, a tag that can be ignored by those who wish.
The last time this changed for any region was for the SADR territory (who, along with Morocco, claim the territory of the former Spanish Sahara). This was as a result of forum feedback to a question originally asked here. I asked for feedback both in that forum and also messaged all mappers who had edited boundaries in the area. The result (many forum replies later) resulted in a change to the admin_level of the SADR territories from 3 to 2.
If someone wanted to make a case that (say) Molossia or Slowjamastan should really have an admin_level of 2 they’re welcome to do so, but I suspect that the wider OSM community would not be in favour.
Sometimes there are disputes over “country status” - the People’s Republic of China believes that Taiwan is not an independent country but merely part of China. In some of these cases (e.g. Taiwan) OSM takes the view that Taiwan is a country. Most countries people around the world agree in the de facto sense that they treat it like one. You can make the same case for many other places where there are disputes around the world, and at some point (quite a long way above Slowjamastan in the least) it makes sense for OSM to say “no, that is not a real country”. That doesn’t mean that something can’t be mapped as something appropriate to its status - in the case of Molossia, a tourist attaraction seems correct to me.
Well, in case of micronations answer is blatantly obvious. There are some cases which may be tricky or potentially deserve discussion but case of say Slowjamastan is far away from that.
Except if it can help address the issue of micronations. One way of solving consists in repeating “these people are blatantly wrong, period”. Apparently this does not help to prevent edit wars. Or we can try other angles, that’s what I’m trying to do here.
Sorry if this angle does not feel helpful to you. But I don’t see the point in becoming patronizing.
