Mapping historically significant sites without physical representation

General talk
1

I recently noticed that a user mapped several historical sites without any physical representation (like memorial plaque, or anything similar). They are simply places where something historically significant happened.

For example:

  1. Site of the NATO bombing of Belgrade
  2. Site of the beginning of Bosnian War
  3. Siege of Sarajevo
  4. Site of the beginning of First World War
  5. Site of the Srebrenica genocide

I was reading Limitations - OpenStreetMap Wiki, and Verifiability - OpenStreetMap Wiki and it seems to me that such things does not pass Verifiability test.

Shoud such objects, or rather sites, be mapped on OSM or not?

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2

Looking at the site of the beginning of the first world war, presumably referring to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand:

  • The plaque commemorating the assassination is already mapped on the north side of the river
  • This mapper has located the site south of the river - I don’t think any significant event happened there
  • The tag used is historic=battlefield, which seems like a stretch for an assassination of an individual
  • The wikidata and wikipedia tags refer to the entire First World War, not to this location or even the event that happened at this location.

I don’t know if this is typical, but in this example there seem to be issues with accuracy and usefulness even aside from the question of whether this kind of thing is mappable.

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3

They should not. Someone can make a umap of such sites if they want.

15 Likes
5

I would agree with @woodpeck here. These points/sites could be added in their own thematic map. I would not have a problem if user created dedicated wikipage and added coordinates, but not putting it on the general map.

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6

+1 Not much to be added, except: Don’t hesitate to remove such virtual objects without any physical representaion on the ground.

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7

OSM isn’t the only open information database that exists. You can create entries for those events including their location in wikidata for example. That would be entirely in scope there, but it’s not really suitable for OSM.

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