Russian–Ukrainian war

It’s still in conflict with Russian–Ukrainian war - OpenStreetMap Wiki

The Ukrainian mappers should choose to either enforce the statement on this page, upate the statement or deprecate the page and the statement altogether.

I would be in favour of this option, but I am not the author of this page and I do not intend to fiddle with it. Feel free to repeat this on the Talk page.

Glad to see you’ve decided to come around on that in last couple of month. Not to point the finger or say I told you so, but that might have happened already if people who aren’t from Ukraine to begin with hadn’t of tried to advocate on their behalf to begin with. What’s the incentive for them to update or deprecate the article at this point when other people from outside of the country can just enforce it for them regardless though?

One of example of that for anyone interested BTW is that Friendly Ghost seems to be the only person reverting edits in the Ukraine at this point. After two months of casually watching the situation I have yet to anyone who is actually from the Ukraine revert edits there. So it seems like Friendly Ghost is really the only person who cares. Technically the page could just be left is as and people from Ukraine can enforce if they want to or not. While the rest of us, Friendly Ghost included, just minds our own business (and by that I mean let editors in the Ukraine make the ultimate decisions when it comes to the article and what edits in the country to revert or not). They aren’t mutually exclusive though.

What part of “We urge everyone to refrain from any mapping of the territory of Ukraine at the moment!” did you miss?

1 Like

Don’t you think the Ukrainians have a more pressing war to fight than edit wars online?

At least from what I’ve seen it seems like people have been pretty accommodating when they edits were reverted and they asked not map there anymore. So I’m not sure exactly what “edit wars” your talking about. That said, they don’t have the time to enforce they own standard then that’s on them. I reject the idea that the local Ukrainian community can’t or shouldn’t be able to enforce their own standards for how to map in the country though. It’s also ridiculous to like your version of meddling in the country is OK but everyone else’s isn’t. Reverting an edit is still mapping and not in the spirit of the their request that people just leave the country alone. Especially if your doing it regularly and without consulting them in the process or really them even asking you to revert people who make edits there.

Let’s agree to disagree with each other on this topic.

That’s fine, but you’d have to at least agree that the “we shall take action” part of their request makes it clear that they are the ones who are going to take action to revert, modify, or delete edits people make there. Cool that they at are war, but they still made it clear that they are the one’s who are going to take action to deal with edits that are made there. You can’t just expect everyone else to follow a request your actively ignoring either. Otherwise, practice what you preach and let them take action like the request says they will instead of doing it for them. If not, then I don’t really see why anyone should care about or follow it at this point.

I look at what exactly is being edited by the local community since the beginning of the war. They quietly edit everything that is not related to military objects. That is why I say that we need to define clearer rules than we have now. I also edit the Wiki in Russian and I can easily write the same page with the prohibition of edits, but what’s the point if the map is still edited, including by the Ukrainian community. That is why I say that the de facto wiki page only bans military installations, and everything else is quietly ruled by the local community.

I don’t know if I brought it up here or in another discussion but from what I’ve seen things are going on mostly as normal in a lot of the country where their isn’t active fighting going on and people seem to still be editing in those areas as normal. Although I haven’t checked recently, but I don’t why people wouldn’t still be editing in places that aren’t even being effected by war. Let alone why anyone would care if they are.

Mapping activity overall (at least by active Ukrainian OSM community members) has notably decreased since the start of the war, especially in the eastern half of the country. Mapping activity since then is mostly conducted by new mappers, foreign mappers and mappers who are primarily active in or west of the capital city. That seems to indicate that the active core of the Ukrainian OSM community is indeed following the stated guideline (or whatever you want to call the content of that Wiki page).

As @Adamant1 has pointed out, the Ukrainian mappers are not actively reverting all mapping activity in or near war zones and occupied regions. I am also not reverting each and every edit I see in this area. War-related edits still receive scrutiny and reverts, not only by myself. If nothing else, the statement on the Wiki makes it clear that OSM should not be a platform for the information war surrounding the ongoing hostilities in Ukraine.

In the case of Ukraine, even the definition of the “local community” isn’t clear. Depending on whom you ask, it might be people recognizing the Kiev government or Moscow. We should simply try to refrain from mapping until the situation stabilizes.

2 Likes

Good point and it’s even worse then that. It may be very dangerous for the latter to speak out.

Also relevant to this topic are Frederik Ramm’s comments on the changesets that edited the recently blown up dam: Changeset: 137024390 | OpenStreetMap Changeset: 136995700 | OpenStreetMap Changeset: 137011904 | OpenStreetMap Changeset: 136996215 | OpenStreetMap Changeset: 137007797 | OpenStreetMap

All of Frederik’s comments here say:
“Please refrain from “disaster tourism” mapping like this. The Ukrainian community is perfectly capable of recording destruction themselves where it is deemed useful. There’s no need for people from other parts of the world to race to be the first to translate their TV news into Ukraine mapping.”

I think this applies to many of the war-related mapping efforts in Ukraine since February last year.

3 Likes

War related mapping efforts sure. I don’t think anyone is arguing people should be mapping related to the war. The question is what does or doesn’t qualify under that definition though. Obviously not everything being mapped regardless of what it is or where it’s being mapped is “war related.”

I think it’s clear enough to at least have basic conversation about what type of mapping should or shouldn’t take place there, by whom, and where the mapping should or be valid. Otherwise you could just as easily say the request on the Wiki isn’t valid because whoever created it might a Russian stooge from one of the breakaway areas or some nonsense. It’s ridiculous to act like whomever created the recommendation is a true Ukrainian local who should be taken at their word, but the people doing local mapping in areas that aren’t directly effected by the war are just nefarious actors who’s edits should be reverted.

BTW, if I remember correctly when I looked into it that the person who created the Wiki article was a new user and didn’t have an account on the main site. So if anyone want’s to go down that route it’s way likely more they are a Russian stooge then it is whomever is doing random mapping in parts of Ukraine that aren’t effected by the war is.

Asphodel is changing name tags so that name matches name:ru and not name:uk, both in the northern part of Crimea and in the Ukrainian mainland near it.
See for example Relation History: ‪Новотроицкая поселковая община‬ (‪12471035‬) | OpenStreetMap
Has this been discussed and is this correct?

1 Like

That change will have to be made anyway. It is only the question of when.

I was asking the Ukrainian mappers, because they are in charge of setting local mapping guidelines.

You said that it happened in distinct parts of the country.

1 Like

I did. What about it?