Dear Ukrainian community,
the OSMF data working group has been asked to mediate in the question of whether names in the Crimea should be in Ukrainian or in Russian.
First, I would ask everyone to stop renaming streets or other objects from Ukrainian to Russian or vice versa.
Second, I would like to talk to mappers who actually live in the Crimea area. Is there anyone local at all?
You can email me at frederik@remote.org (in English, please) or write here.
Bye
Frederik
Переведу:
Уважаемое украинское сообщество,
OSMF data working group попросили поразмышлять над вопросом, должны ли названия в Крыму быть на украинском или русском.
Во-первых, я бы хотел попросить всех прекратить переименовывать улицы или другие объекты с украинского на русский или наоборот.
Во-вторых, я бы хотел поговорить с мапперами, которые на самом деле живут в Крыму. Есть ли вообще кто-либо из местных?
Вы можете написать мне по адресу frederik@remote.org (по-английски, пожалуйста) или пишите здесть.
Пока,
Фредерик
От себя добавлю. Вы и тут умудрились пойти вразрез с правилами и не писать пропоузал. Ну да ладно, если гора не идёт к Магомету…
Всем, кто не владеет английским, предлагаю свою помощь по переводу. Мне хочется этот вопрос тоже разрешить и прописать в Вики.
Frederik and whole OSMF data working group, thank you for your support.
But from my point of view, we have here good example of destructive activity according to personal preferences.
Instead of following community rules or discussing changes, somebody asks for mediations from you. Sad but true.
I am not from Crimea, but from Azov sea regeon. Here a lot of russian-speaking people, but I’m following rule about that tag name should be in Ukrainian.
B\c it was a desicion of the community and this decision looks natural for country Ukraine.
We have tag-set name:* where all members have to write translations for their names. So I don’t see any national problem in this issue.
The problem is that individuals break rules in personal manner and attemting to break community. No discussions, no proposals, just destructive edits and complains to DWG. I think it is not OSM way.
ru:
Фредерик и OSMF data working group, спасибо Вам за вашу поддержку.
Однако с моей стороны, мы имеем хороший пример деструктивной деятельности в угоду персональным предпочтениям.
Вместо следования правилам сообщества или обсуждения изменений, кто-то просит Вас разобраться. Печально но правда.
Я не из Крыма, я живу на Азовском море. Тут так-же множество рускоговорящих людей, но я соблюдаю правило что тег name должен быть на Украинском языке. Потому что таким было решение сообщества и оно выглядит логичным для страну Украина.
Существует набор name:* тегов, куда учасники могут и должны вписывать переводы. Поэтому нет здесь национальной проблемы.
Проблема в том что отдельные участники нарушают правила в частном порядке и пытаются расколоть сообщество. Ни предложений, ни дискуссий, только деструктивные правки и жалобы в DWG. Не думаю что это это путь OSM
Hello, Frederik.
I am not from Crimea, but I’m from Kharkiv. Majority of people from Kharkiv-city are russian-speaking, but there are a lot of ukrainian-speaking people in suburbs and in small towns an villages of Kharkiv region. And everybody of them can understand both russian and ukrainian.
But newertheless, ukrainian is a an official language of whole Ukraine state.
And look at Russia OSM map: there a lot of non-russian-speaking peoples in Russia, but “name” tags are written in russian at whole Russia map. Becouse russian is official language in Russia.
P.S. In my humble opinion, name tage should be in translit or english. So ewerybody in a world will be able to read rendered map at www.openstreet.map. If you are not agree with me, try to read Armenia, China or Japan map.
Hi Frederik
Here is one more feedback describing my attention to language discussion in Ukraine
Last year I’ve created new topic on forum Крим, name, name:uk, name:ru
The main message to OSM-UA-Community was to pay attention to changes of two newbies(CRISP and qaosm). Lots of their changes consisted of modifying villages/towns/cities names from Ukrainian to Russian. (All those objects were initially created with Ukrainian names).
I asked to revert those changes and continue using Ukrainian titles for Crimean places because of the following reasons:
And now again… spring-2012 gave us some more Crimean newbies: Vetrov and Kengaru. Those guys didn’t mapped any streets, any POIs - their job was to replace Ukrainian to Russian. This was unaccepted by Community again. Those changes were reverted without discussion, because there was nothing to discuss and everyone agreed to revert.
Note, people from the whole Ukraine visit Crimea as it is very popular place for rest near the sea. Large part of Crimean osm-data is entered by tourists. All they have the right to vote for usage of Ukrainian.
I spend lot of time to fix address, routing, multipolygon, reduction bot errors, etc in every region of Ukraine. And, you know, I feel the right to use my native Ukrainian language in every region of Ukraine.
Russian titles are important only for newbies, who want to see their street name in Russian and don’t want to open openstreetmap.ru or openstreetmap.by.
Other members want to see the map of Ukraine consistently and ask everyone to use Ukrainian in name-tag. And everyone is also asked to enter name:ru information since it is useful for lots of people from Ukraine and other ex-USSR countries. name:en is entered for most of streets for people from another countries. Lots of tourist attractions are also tagged with name:en. Even name:de is entered for dozens of Kyiv streets. name:hu is entered for lots of streets in Berehove. name:crh is entered for some streets in Yevpatoia, Crimea.
That’s it.
Hope that you found some useful information in my answer.
Bye
О, весь национализм в сборе. Типа укатали русский Севастополь и он теперь стал украинский. Не надо выдавать желаемое за действительность только. Не вводите парня в заблуждение. И кстати Ветров достаточно много сделал на Центральном холме. До него там одни квадратики стояли, а теперь даже ворота и заборчики достаточно точно обозначены. Вот только Минная стенка, да вулица 
Мокроусова накосячены. Объективнее великодержавные граждане надо быть, говорящие, как думает voltron, на языке нацбольшинства. 
Hi,
I’m replying to dudka here but I hope I cover some of the other points as well.
I am trying to be impartial but it is very difficult because it seems that everybody’s view of reality is a bit tainted.
For example, many Ukrainians have expressed the idea that everything was in peace in the Crimea until Vetrov & Co came along. Dudka did, too:
But look at this way for example - just a random way that I picked by zooming in:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/94850417/history
Created in January 2011, the street had a Russian name all along. In April this year, you (dudka) added a name:uk tag but you left the name tag unchanged. 6 days later, _sevbot changes the name tag to Ukrainian. This was changed back by Vetrov, and then reverted again by _sev.
I don’t know how many other cases like this there are, but in this situation it is clear that the “edit war” was started by _sevbot, and not by Vetrov who only restored the version of the way that had been in use for 15 months.
Now you may all think bad about Vetrov and his manners but he was not the aggressor, at least not in this case.
I read that according to a recent law, regional administrations are allowed to grant official status to other languages.
Is that honestly true? What about these images, are they just minority exceptions?
To me (an outsider who knows nothing about the Crimea other than what’s on Wikipedia and in these images) it looks as if Russian was indeed more commonly used than anything else.
I agree that it would be good to discuss this with the community as a whole. However, OSM is not organised along national borders, this means that in OSM, people from different parts of the Ukraine do not necessarily have the right to tell Crimea mappers what they should be doing. It is often convenient to organise things nationally but nobody says that all Ukrainian mappers have a vote when deciding how to map in the Crimea.
I honestly think that, as soon as any community in OSM is strong enough in numbers, they should be allowed to decide what they do for themselves. The only thing I currently have doubts about is whether there is a community in the Crimea at all. It seems to me as if everyone involved lives elsewhere!
I think that these language-specific web sites are indeed the future. In the long run, maybe we can even abandon the “name” tag altogehter, and only have “name:uk” and “name:ru” and so on. However, between now and then, we need an interim solution that everyone can live with.
I have the impression that many Ukrainian mappers say: “If you want Russian, go to openstreetmap.by where there’s a Russian layer!” - at the same time, if you told them “If you want Ukrainian, go to …” then they would feel offended!
Is there currently a web site that renders the map with all Ukrainian names, even where the “name” tag is in Russian?
This “feeling” you speak of, is a cultural thing and not a legal thing. Those born to Russian-speaking parents have this same “feeling”, and you have no moral right to say that your feeling is right and their feeling is wrong just because international politics turned out to draw a border in a certain way.
The first step to finding a compromise is to accept that every side is “a little bit right”, and it is not a question of who wins and who loses, but a question of finding something that most participants are happy with. Or, if not happy, at least “are ok with”.
Bye
Frederik
Frederik, we a trying to avoid holywar.
That is why we are trying to have some rules for community. B\c if everybody would draw as he want, then it will be chaos.
It is impossible to have the same rules for entire world. Each region has its own features. That is why community required. For Ukraine this community covers Crimea too, I think.
And this guys, who draw map, decide that name must be in Ukraine, b\c it is more easy to process and support when all data in Ukraine is in Ukrainian. No politics, no inhibition just for data to be consistent. This make possible to have different validators, bots and etc.
Two-languages name make data inconsistent and useless.
But some users doesn’t discuss with others, who draw this region before. They decide to make complain to DWG and change data as ‘feeling’ correct.
Hi,
let me try to give more clarifications
Yes, and I still think that this is true
Last year two guys renamed hundreds of Ukrainian villages/towns - I’ve started discussion.
This year Vetrov did it again - just check his changesets on 7th of June.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/11823286
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/11823399
and ten others
These changesets are his first changesets in Crimea. His earlier changesets cover different regions around Moscow.
He commented “поправил названия”(corrected/fixed/adjusted name). Was it wrong to be corrected? No, it was correct. And I informed community about those changes. We reverted them.
…but edit war started. And some mappers renamed also lots of street names.
Kengaru’s changesets - just open any - streets renaming only. Is it a friend of Vetrov trying to help him? Don’t know… He is quite unusual mapper starting with JOSM and using reverter-plugin…
_sevbot(bot managed by _sev) also entered name:en on base of Ukrainian name. Its behavior fits to rules specified in wiki.
Let’s look on another streets: http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/107582888/history and others in Feodosia, Crimea.
Streets in Feodosia were mapped by Art’y last year, he entered Ukrainian names. Why did Vetrov removed Ukrainian name? Have he ever been in Feodosia? Not sure…
Look on another streets: http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/143060287/history http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/37906843/history and others in Alupka and around Alupka.
They were mapped by va-deam and skirp(all his changesets cover Crimea only). Why did Vetrov removed Ukrainian name? This is unacceptable! This is what we call vandalism.
Gyro, Z440, being Crimean top mappers, didn’t change name-tags of 37906843, why does one Russian guy allow himself to break the rules and erase information?
Is that honestly true? What law did you read? Yes, there was one, but still not signed because Ukrainian people started protests against it.
This may be true internally in Sevastopol, I wrote about road signs marking villages and towns.
By the way, here is a road sign(Sevastopol too) in Ukrainian, German and English: http://maps.yandex.ua/-/CRxpVEMw . This is exception, didn’t seen any more German signs.
I can not agree with this message. We make one job, we map one country, we live in one state. Otherwise if everybody would map with his own rules - there would be a mess of data, not a db, not a map.
Can I mark the street where I live as “The Best street in the World”? No OSM-members live there except me. Can I define my own rules on my own street? No!
would be nice.
Yes, we say so because this is the easiest way to have both Ukrainian and Russian maps.
Unfortunately there is no Ukrainian render(http://toolserver.org/~osm/locale/uk.html only).
I agree with you. We should find a solution. Let’s try.
P.S. Please ask those guys who write direct emails to you to share those emails with Community. It looks like I am talking with someone(who looked for links and laws) else, not only with you. Currently we have only disrespectful Kengaru in another topic.
Let me share my point of view.
I live in the eastern part of Ukraine, my region has the longest border with Russia e.g. you can imagine the transboundary affection. I confirm that the vast majority people in cities here mostly speak Russian. But if you go through the region people speak Ukrainian or Surzhyk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surzhyk). Different people communicate well though some are ashamed to speak Ukrainian. Russian-speaking citizens do understand Ukrainian names, labels, newspapers etc.
The significant point here is that Ukrainian is the only state language (all over the country). See the translated Ukrainian Constitution.
This point is crucial because every document is made in Ukrainian language. Here’s the short but comprehensive list of obligatory items in Ukrainian language: a passport, an education process, a court decision, a tax roll, bookkeeping, a customs declaration, a railway ticket, a TV channel, a radioshow. an advertisements, a bank credit contract, a postal delivery note, address, a label on any goods and so on. Ukrainian community reasonably agreed: name=* must be in Ukrainian.
For a long period of time on the territory of the Soviet Union there was a period of forced introduction of Russian language. No doubt Ukraine has a strong Soviet legacy: many tend to bring back that time and refuse to face the facts.
And, sadly, bribery and poor financing of social life from the government brakes the execution of the Law. In other words if someone puts billboard advertising in Russian (in violation of the law) there’s nobody to stop this. Nobody will replace the soviet-made street nameplates (as there are more important social matters) but simultaneously the residence permit in the passport is in Ukrainian. Some citizens (and mappers here) do believe they are entitled to brake the law and community rules.
Personally I speak Russian, but I honour the law. I add Ukrainian (as main), Russian and English names on the map.
I really feel offended when the data from OSM in my car navigator is inconsistent e.g. different languages are mixed together. It makes me mad when search did not return any result because of improper (mixed) language. I do not understand why somebody is lazy enough to submit a proposal although at the same time is efficient in correcting object names according their personal opinion. If you don’t know or dislike Ukrainian please use other rendering services to see what you like on the map. People, don’t forget: OSM is a non-commercial company and is supported by donations. A demand of extended map view options require extra computing power e.g. more money. At least consider making a donation to get the best all-in-one comprehensive map of the world.
BTW A special law for support of “European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages” was recently adopted in Parliament but haven’t come in force as the President didn’t sign it.
It is intended to introduce regional languages on the same level as the state language.
The adoption was severely criticized by the media and caused mass protests. A hunger strike against this contradictory law is still held in Kyiv.
Greetings Frederick,
I tried not to interfere in the debate because I can not add to words of Dudka, va-deam and others nothing new.
I am one of the old residents of the project in Ukraine and I think that made a lot of useful. I do not want that other members broke already made arrangements in inappropriate ways. There is a proposals system, if they want to change something.
At the beginning I had a choice of which language to use for drawing my home city Dnipropetrovsk a Russian or Ukrainian. Moreover, at that time no agreement on the use of language did not exist. The choice should be obvious as the local population speaks mostly Russian. I use Russian in everyday communication. However, all documents, treaties, regulations made only in Ukrainian. On the main workplace where I work during the discussion of legislative moments all employees switch from Russian to Ukrainian well and not feel discomfort.
But I decided if I live in Ukraine, I have to use the official language. I took part and made the most of the translation into Ukrainian for the osm.org to promote this decision. I translated into Ukrainian Merkaartor and JOSM. Now I try to keep actual state of Ukrainian translation for JOSM and gradually translate manual and instructions for it.
Since OSM is a public project, I participated in discussions of proposals concerning the rules of drawing objects on the map of Ukraine and took part in the vote. Sometimes my opinion was opposite to votes of others but I used the decisions that were taken by the community. I’m before and now will to follow accepted agreements.
Those such as kangaroo, primarily show disrespect to all other project participants by their actions, unwillingness to discuss issues and violations of the accepted agreement. They do not contribute by their actions to community cohesion, but only bring hatred and division in the common cause. Our community is very small and after the actions of these persons it may shrink or even disappear. I was very concerned about it.
I appeal to you as to respected person in the project, asking, first of all pay attention to compliance by all parties accepted agreements and secondly, as soon as possible admit tag «name» as an old one, which is undesirable for use worldwide.
Sincerely,
Andygol
Hi Frederik,
You can’t rely on signs in Ukraine like You do in Germany. Here is one example from many: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6qn4D0aGU4
This street has name “Червоноврмійська” than it was sort of renamed in “Велика Васильківська” and even new signs were installed on streets. But now (2nd March 2012) new signs with the old name were installed again, because the renaming was not correct or something like this. So you can imagine, if this kind of situation is possible in the capital, you can expect much worse situation in regions. This is my point of view on “truth on the ground” question in ukraine.
Second point is new users. At the beginning it is difficult to understand that OSM is a community project, and one is not mapping for himself, but for everyone. But here we have a person that is literally saying “where I was born, I will talk on the language I want, and I will map in a language I want.” It is not’ they own playground. I am sure You still remember Korintenkacker and his clones. I think You will also not welcome, if someone in Marzahn, Berlin will write street names in the “name” tag in russian language or arabic language in Wedding and Kreuzberg, only because there are so many russian/arabic speaking people living there.
iONiX
Hm. Yep.
Road signs and street names in Ukraine is far from “ordnung”. For example, there is the building in Kharkiv (Ukraine), at the “Чередніченківський провулок, 7” (Cherednichenkivsky lane, 7), but it have a sign “Чередніченківська вулиця 7” (Cherednichenkivska street, 7). And as far as I know, Cherednichenkivska street is abcent at all in official Kharkiv street list (info from mr. VF, mapper from TravelGPS mappers team).
http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=260520
Same problem - names in Switzerland - french and german. So, this is not only ukrainian issue. I think it’s time to declare name as deprecated and find best solution to display name:* that user prefer.
Dear mappers in the Ukraine,
DWG have come up with the resolution below. This resolution does not end the case; it just describes what we expect from involved parties until an amicable solution can be found. We would really, really like everyone to shake hands and be friends - after all, all of us are in this project together and we want OSM to be a success!
I hope that the discussion can be led in a civil and friendly fashion by all mappers involved.
Bye
Frederik
OSMF Data Working Group
Resolution regarding edit wars in the Crimea (Ukraine), issued 2012-07-31.
The Crimea peninsula is part of Ukraine. Official language in Ukraine is Ukrainian. (Additional official languages may be defined by regional authorities but state regarding the Crimea is unclear.) The Crimea has a majority of Russian speakers and Russian is used on the ground. Road signs in the Crimea are often in Russian although it has been claimed that these should, legally, be in Ukrainian (unclear). Many streets in the Crimea have been initially mapped with Russian in the “name” tag. Ukraine community operates various tools/bots that modify the name tags and tries to ensure objects are properly tagged with all three of name:uk, name:ru, and name:en. In the process, the “name” tag was often set to the Ukrainian version which alienated some Russian-language mappers in the Crimea and this led to edit wars and vitriolic forum discussions. Position of Ukrainian mappers is (1) that they have a community policy to use Ukrainian in the name tag because that is the official language; (2) that if anyone wants something else they should challenge that policy; (3) that if someone wants to see the map in Russian they could use one of a number of existing web services that renders all names in Russian.
This is just intended to be a short introduction for the casual reader. If anything in this introduction is inaccurate it does not change our resolution.
2.1. Local knowledge - Enlisting local people to contribute their knowledge to OSM is an important goal for OSM.
2.2. Community - It is in OSM’s interest to have a community peacefully working together.
2.3. Edit wars - prolonged edit wars damage community relations, create unnecessary load on our infrastructure, and make our data less usable. They are to be avoided.
2.4. On-the-ground-rule - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Disputes#On_the_Ground_Rule
We ask all involved parties to refrain from “edit warring”. If true vandalism is detected by the community then it is ok to revert it; if however there is a point of contention behind this “vandalism” and the alleged vandal comes back to revert the revert, then the community should seek help from DWG instead of engaging in an edit war as it has happened in this case.
We hope that the Ukrainian community can find an amicable solution with Crimea mappers. Such a solution must necessarily include local mappers, and efforts must be made to reach out to them. It is not sufficient to execute some kind of proposal process and say “you can participate in the vote if you want”. We acknowledge that this is difficult, especially given the rather un-civil way in which some Crimea mappers have behaved in this discussion, but if they are not included in the solution then the problem cannot be resolved. Even though the Crimea is part of Ukraine, this does not necessarily put the Ukraine OSM community in a position where they can rule over the Crimea OSM community.
Until such a solution is agreed upon, we ask everyone to stick to the “on the ground” rule. In particular, this means:
You can set name:uk and name:ru with whatever seems correct; removing or deliberately falsifying these tags is not acceptable and will be treated as vandalism.
For the non-postfixed “name” tag, the only acceptable value is what is physically on the street sign, or whatever sign is appropriate if the object in question is not a street.
Never change the “name” tag unless you have personally been at the place or seen a photo of the particular object and a sign containing the name.
It is not enough to say “ is the official language” or “There is a law that says street signs must be in the language”. You have to see the actual sign.
If there are signs in different languages, or one sign with different languages on it, then both names may be tagged together in the “name” tag; any edit warring about the order of names is not acceptable.
We will re-set all “name” tags in the Crimea that have been changed in April 2012 or later to the March 2012 version. After that, changes are only permitted according to the above “on the ground” rule.
We encourage the Ukrainian community to set up a tile server that shows all objects with their “name:uk” tag, so that users of the map have a choice between the “all Russian” names (a rendering that already exists on openstreetmap.by among others), “all Ukrainian” names (a rendering that does not yet exist to our knowledge), or “all names as given on the ground” (the default rendering on openstreetmap.org). The operators of openstreetmap.by have offered to add a “name:uk” rendering to their system, and if required, OSMF can offer additional resources to make this happen.
Hi Frederik,
may I ask You some additional information?
And here example, why this DWG decision can not be a final decision!
According to decision of DWG, I am allowed to put in name on this street:
Kind regards,
iONiX
Hmmm…
This resolution lead to mixing ukrainian and russian names and can not solve the problem 
Great, now i can split my street into three parts using a 25 years old road sign written in russian. Who cares that the name was changed twice since that time - we have a road sign “on the ground”. And this is just one of many cases.
This falls under the “there are signs in different languages” so in this case dual-language tag should be used.
Yeah, now we can’t rely on consistency of “name” tag so we should implement wider use of “name:*” tags in converters and renderers
