Talk:WikiProject China

Discuss WikiProject China here:

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Naming

If the european users will map all roads in china the latin writing system is ok. Otherwise please use chinese fonts.

Example Beijing

name=北京
name:en=Beijing
name:de=Peking
name:pinyin=Běijīng

- Robotnik 10:36, 4 December 2007

I think we could use instead

name=北京
int_name=Beijing
name:en=Beijing
name:de=Peking
name:zh=北京
name:zh_pinyin=Běijīng

--Esperanza 10:28, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Legality

China has released a news article about illegal mapping efforts as a threat to national security. The article also mentions that any foreigner collecting geographical data without permission will be "severely punished". This basically outlaws the entire OSM project, and any participation or contribution. We should probably mention this on the China page, as it would be unfortunate to have anyone excited about contributing to China in OSM be punished for it.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gztBwYoKuGg90jljU9LGALKCw_Yw

Also, what to do about existing data? Due to the wiki nature of the map, the Chinese government could fairly easily delete the entire country. Also, because contributers are tagged in the metadata, they could pursue "criminals" who have contributed data. This worries me greatly.

-- Jasonpstewart 05:28, 28 March 2008

Yeah I've added a legality section at the top. People should definately be aware of this.

I think it would be paranoid to worry too much about the government persuing contributors. They try to censor all kinds of internet content already, and chinese people and outsiders generally run rings around them. They'll be too busy trying to shut down websites to look at any one website in a lot of detail. I suppose we could check if any chinese contributors are revealing too much information about their identities. Likewise it seems unlikely to me that Chinese officials would go to the trouble of figuring out that they can delete stuff. Mass deletions can be fixed by re-importing from a planet.osm dump.

I see it as our duty to continue encouraging our chinese contributors and facilitate their mapping as an act of disobedience against these laws (just as wikipedia does against censorship for example) Of course the laws and publicity about the laws will mean we get fewer chinese contributors. It's a real shame, because developing countries stand to benefit the most from OSM.

Clearly we should all be aware that if we go on holiday in China, we can't go wandering around gawping at GPS units, because foreigners attract suspicion from the police at the best of times.

-- Harry Wood 11:08, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

It's easy for you to say so - there will be no consequences for you personally. It would be a bit scary for me to "disobey" if I lived in China. But I don't think that driving in a car with your GPS turned on would cause anybody's suspicion. And there are lots and lots and lots of highways, that need to be mapped in China now. By the way, I don't understand it completely, why the AND data was not imported. It is inaccurate, but anyway it is safer for the Chinese mappers to correct the existing base, than to get a completely new one. -- Jekader 09:39, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

FYI, some accredited geologists just got busted in Xinjiang for "illegal map-making": [1] Jpatokal 02:09, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I've listed that along with an article [2] from yesterday, on the page there -- Harry Wood 15:06, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Bing

How well do Bing aerial images line up in China? --Ebenezer 03:13, 21 January 2011 (UTC)