I absolutely love OpenStreetMap. Back when I first started building (legal) mountain bike trails I realized that without a map they aren't the most useful. OSM gave me the system in which to document them, and then from there I was able to reuse the data to make print maps and eventually my current project: https://trailmaps.app
Contributing to Open Street Map has given me a ton of satisfaction. Knowing that my somewhat minor efforts to correct one address, add one feature, correct one trail will propagate to so many different places and help other people not get lost, find something new, or just be able to navigate more safely in the world makes me feel like I am leaving the world a better place more than decades of working at FANG ever did.
Weird little quirk I've recently encountered, somewhat related to OSM: the `mkgmap` tool used to convert OSM data to Garmin map files display Chinese pronunciation as English names next to POI names in Japanese, due to 1) Japanese OSM maps have a lot of entries written in Japanese without indication of language, 2) no one is doing anything about it, due to Wikipedia style community nuances or something, and 3) the tool have no "--assume-language=$LANG" style of options(plus Japanese script->pronunciation mapping isn't even remotely bijective).
e.g. There's a bicycle parking next to the parkside exit at Ueno station, "上野駅公園口自転車駐車場". This is:
meaning: Ueno station park entrance bicycle parking ground in English,
read IRL: ue no eki kouen guchi jitensha chusha jou in Japanese, but written
on the map: shang ye yi gong yuan kou zi zhuan che zhu che chang as Chinese(in Pinyin but I don't know how to type it).
...I would imagine that utility of that is limited for non-Japanese users. Makes me wonder what are the reasons why master OSM data hadn't had missing pronunciations autogenerated or mkgmap tool given an auto selected language flag, but I'm not intending to be OSMian nor am I wanting to be the one to define national borders for bunch of nation states, so there's that...
The President of the United Stated doesn’t actually have the authority to tell anyone besides the executive branch what to name geographic places. So the order only forces official US government maps created by USGS and the like to be updated. Other maps can choose to update if they want to.
Open Street Map tends to reserve the “name” tag for what things are commonly called by the local community. It appears that for the Lake Ontario and The Gulf of Mexico they’ve added an “official_name:US” tag to capture the names in the executive orders.
It's up to the renderer what to display. OSM tags data according to global consensus, they use Gulf of Mexico for 'name'. There is an attribute for 'official_name:en-US' that returns Gulf of America. Same approach for other disputed names/places.
"Few if any renderers consume official_name=* or any of its subkeys; in practice, the purpose of this key is for geocoders to find the feature when a user searches for the official name."
Well, when you visit it https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=7/23.765/-87.100 there's no naming of that area at all. At least when looked at from a US IP. And when you search "Gulf of America" it returns "Gulf of Mexico". So take from that what you will.
Also https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=8/43.622/-78.852 shows "Lake Ontario". But it does carry the tag "official_name:en-US": "Lake America", so search will find Lake America and a mapping app could decide to show the official name
Though generally official names are the names nobody uses. For example the country labeled "France" also has the attribute "official_name:en": "French Republic"
e.g. There's a bicycle parking next to the parkside exit at Ueno station, "上野駅公園口自転車駐車場". This is:
...I would imagine that utility of that is limited for non-Japanese users. Makes me wonder what are the reasons why master OSM data hadn't had missing pronunciations autogenerated or mkgmap tool given an auto selected language flag, but I'm not intending to be OSMian nor am I wanting to be the one to define national borders for bunch of nation states, so there's that...Open Street Map tends to reserve the “name” tag for what things are commonly called by the local community. It appears that for the Lake Ontario and The Gulf of Mexico they’ve added an “official_name:US” tag to capture the names in the executive orders.
Interesting that he changed the name to that of the entire continent, so Mexicans and Venezuelans can feel part of it.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:official_name:en-US
"Few if any renderers consume official_name=* or any of its subkeys; in practice, the purpose of this key is for geocoders to find the feature when a user searches for the official name."
Though generally official names are the names nobody uses. For example the country labeled "France" also has the attribute "official_name:en": "French Republic"
If they ask what the rules of the game are, they've just lost again.
They didn't invent being deliberately obtuse.
Now, I'd love for each geographical region to take their very worst area, and rename it after a certain politician for the lulz.