I hate to break it to you, but there isn’t going to be any vote, let alone an “official” one. OSM works with consensus and, if necessary, with DWG intervention. These things have already happened. OSMF board intervention would be the final escalation, but my magical, flawless foresight tells me that the OSMF board will in most cases point at things that the DWG has already said.
I thought the purpose of this thread was to get information from the Ukrainian community about what kind of mapping should or or shouldn’t be done in their territory and how and where a consensus was reached. Instead, an American, a Dutchman, a Spaniard and a Russian argue here.
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Considering people’s nationality/ethnicity to undervalue their interest in a subject is not a good way to go. Whether you are American, a Dutchman, a Spaniard or a Russian (you left out the Ukrainians here for some reason) is completely indifferent. We are not cats.
On the other hand, I am not arguing anything. I want to know more about the point of view of the Ukrainian community. I am also concerned about the removal of Russian names mentioned in this thread and I have proposed to discuss that elsewhere. I have made a suggestion for improvement for the wiki page assuming it is up to the local community to decide.
I am a Spaniard and I am interested in this subject. Please avoid this kind of pointing fingers because of people’s nationality/ethnicity. If you are interested in improving the wiki documentation on the mapping restriction in Ukraine, this is the right place to discuss it. You don’t need to show a passport for that, just interest and willingness to collaborate.
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I don’t like the tone of this conversation. There is a feeling that the Ukrainian community has been brought to court as an accused in a crime. Also, I don’t like equating the victim with the aggressor
Some question the decisions of our moderators. Let me remind you that we selected the moderators ourselves:
Regarding the “removal” of russian names:
This example seemed doubtful to me. The name has changed. Do we have to add translations into all the laguages that were there before? I think not, because most of the participants make the change without any reward. Adding a new translation is a separate task that takes time.
You should understand that from the point of view of OSM, acceptable data is if:
- They are correct
- They are added correctly (licenses, discussions, etc)
Someone really likes to talk about point 1. and forget about point 2.
At the same time, many explanations have already been given above, and you pretend not to notice it
Above you referred that someone from the Ukrainian community wrote something aggressive. I cannot tell you anything about that particular case, I can only tell you an example from my own life. I spoke with a woman who lives in the suburbs of Kyiv, as a result of russian aggression her arm was torn off, thank God surgeons stitched her up. She spoke very poorly about the russians. Can anyone call her a bad person because of that?
I don’t have enough time for this discussion right now. By the way, many Ukrainian participants are also not very active now, some of them have no electricity for part of the day, and they still have to do the main work, so don’t count on quick answers
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I had read that minute before. It seemed very reasonable to me then and still does.
The DWG already made reference to using good changeset comments. They call them “meaningful changeset comments” in their minute. It is the same idea I was trying to suggest for the wiki page with my previous comment in this thread.
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No one is accusing the Ukrainian community of anything. We just want the guideline to be clarified. That’s it. The thing with the Russian names being removed is unfortunate and people naturally find it offensive, because it is. That doesn’t mean anyone is putting the Ukrainian community on trail over it though. We are just upset about something that’s clearly wrong.
The way to combat that to the degree it needs to be combatted though is by taking a clear stance against people removing Russian names from objects. It’s not that complicated. No one from Ukraine has though. In fact @andygol had several chances to address the issue and completely ignored it and it seems like your being dismissive at best. So people are naturally going to be a little more admit about it since your ignoring their complaints. I’d think Ukrainians would understand something like that as much or more then anyone else would.
There’s like what, 30% of the population in Ukraine that speaks Russian as a first language? Obviously it’s not the same as say Lithuanian being added to every object there just because Lithuanian speakers make up 0.5% of the population. It’s ridiculous you’d even try to act like they are at all comparable. Also, I don’t see how anyone can argue in good faith that translating names into a language that 30% of people there speak natively doesn’t have any benefit.
That’s fine. I don’t see anyone here expecting an immediate response. Obviously it takes time to get the community to come together to clarify things. Really, all we want is an acknowledgement that the guidelines as they stand aren’t great and will be clarified at some point. At least that’s what I want out of this. Same goes for the thing for the Russian names being removed. It would have taken 10 seconds to just acknowledge it was an issue when people first brought it up. Then no one would have continued making an issue out if it. I know I would have dropped it.
That said, the existence of the war isn’t a valid excuse to ignore the rest of the Openstreetmap community when they ask you things. Especially if your still going to post other things in the meantime. Personally, I have sympathy for people that can’t respond to messages because they lack electricity or whatever. There’s plenty of places that aren’t currently being effected by the war though. I find it rather hard to believe that someone from one of those areas couldn’t have just said deleting Russian names is bad and should stop or that the guidelines will be clarified if those are the community’s positions 
(BTW, this seems pretty reasonable to me. So I’d be interested to know why it was mass flagged and hidden. The repeated nonsense with people flagging random comments for no reason is getting extremely irritating)
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The only reason that hasn’t happened is because the person who started the thread in the first place decided to get in the way of them doing that. All the other people have done is reiterated their positions that things need to be clarified. Personally, I don’t call that arguing.
Friendly Ghost saying the point in this discussion is so the Ukrainian mappers can discuss this and clarify these details, and then not letting them do exactly that by badgering people who ask questions (well mainly me) is 100% is arguing. Why not place the blame for this not being resolved yet where actually belongs, instead of acting like everyone is equally here just to derail things and not just Friendly Ghost?
(BTW, this seems pretty reasonable to me. So I’d be interested to know why it was mass flagged and hidden. The repeated nonsense with people flagging random comments for no reason is getting extremely irritating. Surely the comment it was responded to that undervalued people’s opinions based on their nationality/ethnicity is at least equal to or way more inappropriate)
+ many for the first paragraph ;-).
Yet another non Ukrainian here. But well aware of name edit wars in my region (Brittany, France). In order to avoid conflicts and edit wars we do have clear rules. The official language in France is French, so name is in French (no need for a name:fr).
First a little background.
At the begin of previous century, Breton language was forbidden at school.
During the 50s, 60s… and later we had trouble getting bilingual names on the ground (especially for highways managed by the French state), so French direction signs and city limits were regularly hidden by back paint. Then the French state realized that an option was less expensive: add the names in Breton language below in italic. I would like Ukrainians do the same (the name in Russian being a unofficial one below the official in Ukrainian), but that’s to the Ukrainians to decide, well to people with Ukrainians vote rights to decide.
So now on OpenStreetMap: there is a large consensus in the French community to keep name as the French name (as it should for Ukraine for the Ukrainian name), even for people like me that would prefer to use the Breton names (the original ones) in the Breton speaking part of Brittany (even if only few people still speak it).
So over 230,000 objects in OSM have a Breton name. For nearly 200,000 of them we do have the origin of it: it’s indicated by source:name:br.
I strongly suggest the Ukrainian community to create a source:name:ru tag to be able to keep the “old Russian name” as name:ru. Moving from name to name:ru is fine, deleting name:ru is vandalism, what ever you thing about making the Ukrainian name the official name. As you probably got, I’m in favour of this change (but my personal feeling doesn’t matter here).
Adding official_name:ru would be also vandalism: name:* is for the name in the target language, whatever the status. official_name:* for the official name in the target language. name is usually the official name in the official language as long as there is only one official language in the area.
Translated part of FR:Key:name:br:
Sources are indicated by the tag source:name:br.
-
survey: when the contributor makes a physical move on the ground and reports in thename:brwhat he sees on a street sign, a directional sign, etc. -
ofis publik ar brezhoneg: when the contributor uses as a source and for the concerned commune only a toponym or an odonym coming from the KerOfis or TermOfis databases of the Office public de la langue bretonne / Ofis publik ar brezhoneg (OPAB) -
public local authority: to be used in cases where a name is not listed by the OPAB, but found in local official signs or in local administrative acts. -
local knowledge: to be used in cases where a name is not listed in a public source, but is in common local use. -
proper translation: to be used in cases where the name is not concerned by the other cases above and is therefore elaborated by translation/adaptation at the initiative of the contributor. -
copied from name: to be used when the name displayed on an object or a building is in standard Breton (peurunvan). Same as name would be ambiguous. -
osm-br automatic translation: used by OSM-BR translation tool [put a reference on the translation rules used].
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
This should be adapted for name:ru in Ukraine and clearly stated on the wiki.
In short: stop (edit) war and deal with name in Russian in good faith.
If managed a similar way as for Breton names you have the default map in Ukrainian (or French), an Ukrainian map in Ukrainian were available (note that someone added an Ukrainian name on Guidel/Gwidel, I’m fine with name:uk=Гідель, and on your Ukrainian Map you would see Гідель. It is obviously not an official name).
On the French server you’ll see not only the French map but also the Breton Map.
Doing so Ukrainians would smartly show that they are against the Russian invasion war, not against their Russian speaking community or against Russians.
Be smarter than Putin!
Note: a Russian political refugee wrote today “2023: Ukraine will win” on the beach. In French, the official language ;-).
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Too late, the Ukrainian name of Moskow is part of OpenStreetMap since 2015, version 47. 
Close to 100 versions later, no Russian removed it. Smartly.
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For:
On April 13, 2022, 37 streets connected with Russia were renamed in the Ivano-Frankivsk Municipality.[47]
you could use name:20220413- (same value as name) and name:-20220413 (same as old_name). So we now exactly when it did take place. Similar for name:ru variants.
And to add to the issue, the “Ukrainian community” certainly has conflicting views depending on whom we ask. I would be careful with the various self appointed representatives of “the community”.
The only reasonable thing, as I see it, would be to refrain from mapping until the situation stabilizes somewhat.
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I don’t have much to contribute to this thread. A lot has been said already. The only thing I would mention is about this section on the Wiki page:
Such a request (demand) echoes the provisions of the Article 114-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine according to which “Dissemination of information on redeployment, movement or location of the Armed Forces of Ukraine or other military formations established in accordance with the laws of Ukraine, if it is possible to identify them on the ground, if such information is not published by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, committed under martial law or state of emergency, shall be punishable by imprisonment for a term of five to eight years” (source).
There have always been some countries/regions where mapping of certain things (usually military) is forbidden by local law. However, that does not (and should not!) prevent mappers from outside that country mapping whatever they want.
This is clearly the set precedent and, for this reason, we have the Mapping Military Sites template:
Caution: mapping military installations is welcomed in OpenStreetMap, but may be prohibited by local law. Before mapping potentially sensitive sites such as these, please be aware of Section I b of the OSMF Terms of Use: “You are responsible for your own actions […] OSMF generally cannot offer any protection, guarantee, immunity or indemnification.”
My suggestion, therefore, is that the Wiki page is re-written slightly as a (quite understandable) community request rather than some legal demand. This might help diffuse some of the tension some mappers have (at least a little).
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Someone has just made multiple edits to “remove detailed critical infrastructure targeted by russia” - See Changeset: 131934881 | OpenStreetMap and other changesets by this user.
Is this type of edit appreciated or should it be reverted?
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No idea but with the changeset and the history it’s pretty clear what Russia targets. Sounds contra-productive to me. Hope some local people have time to comment.
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KartografZagor is making many changes to the map of Херсон. Their justification is that they’re not mapping sensitive data (changeset discussion), but since this city is actively involved in the conflict, I don’t think that’s true.
Update: the account of this user is now deleted. I don’t know if they did it themselves or if an admin did it.
A similar thing is going on in Горлівка, where Чистая Вода is making a lot of changes to streets and buildings. I have not contacted this user.
That’s why I’m bringing it under attention. If mapping in and near the war zone is not that much of a problem by itself, I suggest updating Russian–Ukrainian war - OpenStreetMap Wiki to better reflect the current policy.
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Very recently a hydropower dam was blown up, and people are already adjusting the map: https://www.openstreetmap.org/history#map=13/46.7799/33.3753
If mapping in Ukrainian war zones is still not appreciated, then please revert these changes and notify offending users.
See mainly the recent edits by batareichik, LEXfes and Bravo_two_zer0.
It isn’t a secret that the Nova Kakhovka Dam was destroyed and it seems clear that it won’t be rebuilt anytime soon. So I think it’s logical that the dam was removed from Openstreetmap.
The only problematic edit is the one from an inexperienced user.
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