The mysterious user editing a global open-source map in China’s favor

> They said the most common form of map vandalism, though, doesn’t rise to the level of serious geopolitics. “[It’s] people drawing a penis,” they said. “It happens about once a week.”

I know there's a lot of fear about the changing character of the web but it's good to see some things never change.

OpenStreetMap handles the issue of disputed boundaries fairly well. From the disputed territories page:

> 1. OpenStreetMap is a database. You are free to make maps from our data leaving out or putting in what you need for harmony with your general usage, culture and legal system. We encourage you to do this directly or to support one of our many worldwide local OpenStreetMap communities that share your issue.

> 2. The existence of a name, boundary location or description in the OpenStreetMap database does NOT imply that that it is legally correct in any jurisdiction.

> 3. The OpenStreetMap community operates under the “on the ground” principle, recording what is actually currently used in a particular area, giving pre­eminence to data collected in­situ. This is generally what is used on our main example map at http://www.openstreetmap.org.

> 4. We recognise the importance of names, borders and descriptions to different national, ethnic, culture or language groups. We have and will continue to build mechanisms where alternatives can be recorded and easily used in maps more suitable to you. We encourage you to contribute such data to OpenStreetMap, to help build our technical infrastructure or to support someone who will.

> 5. However, to remain neutral and to provide a practically useful service to a global community, we cannot delete base data to suit a particular legal jurisdiction.

Knowing how active the mappers and validators on OSM are, these changes (if malicious or incorrect) will likely be fixed/rolled back pretty quick - vandalism happens all the time.

I see one of the changesets by this mapper was addressed by the OSM Data Working Group, and the conclusion appears to be the edit were indeed legitimate and represented the situation on the ground: https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/82702598

> OpenStreetMap did not return a request for comment about how it handles map vandalism or edits in disputed areas.

Seriously, this is lmgtfy territory.

https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/images/d/d8/DisputedTerrito...

Mysterious user is a CCP media operative.

so users are only allowed to edit it against China. Maybe call it Open(But not to China)Street.