Zaporizhzhya, Kherson, Donets'k and Lugans'k: you need to mark these regions as Russia immediately

[devrand]

To @nvkelso

Due to official decree by Vladimir Putin about annexation of Zaporizhzhya, Kherson, Donets'k and Lugans'k regions of Ukraine you need to designate these areas as Russian territories by default in Natural Earth, ASAP.

Remember, it follows from your explanation of "de facto boundaries" policy: "If a country officially annexes a disputed territory like Crimea and it occupies it on the ground then yes it'll show up ... as part of Russia for the default point-of-view"

Thank you for supporting expansion of Russian Empire with Natural Earth data since 2014,
yours truly,
MFA of Russian Federation

[amq]

Just to clarify: this is an /s

It makes no sense to mark those regions as Russian.

[zbroyar]

But they marked Crimea as the russian territory. So, to be consistent they must mark newly occupied Ukrainian territories as russian.

So, go on, @mfogel, @migurski, @mojodna

[PeterNjeim]

@devrand spamming the same issue is a violation of GitHub's ToS, your account could get banned if you continue to spam. Please note that I am not asking for your ban, I don't believe in bans, but instead letting you know that the ToS that you agreed to but didn't read does not permit spam.

@amq That's a false statement. Claiming something "makes no sense" doesn't make it so. Continue reading for more information.

@zbroyar Crimea is marked as Russian territory as it's both controlled and claimed by Russia. Marking it as anything else would make the map inaccurate. If for example Ukraine re-takes Crimea, then Ukraine would both control and claim Crimea, and therefore it would be marked as Ukrainian territory. This is despite the fact that Russia would still be claiming Crimea. Claiming territory doesn't change the map, it's the combination of controlling the claimed territory that changes the map. This rule is applied to all countries equally, that way there's no bias of any kind. Purporting that there is any pro-Russian bias is false for this very reason, as the standard applied is singular and country-agnostic, and therefore the one's purporting a country-based bias are in fact biased themselves (you can be against Russia, but that doesn't mean the map changes, the map can only be changed from the battlefield, not GitHub).

More information in the completed discussion can be found here: #810. Just note that it wasn't really a "discussion" as the proponents for using different rules for Russia compared to every other country were not able to justify their reasoning. Instead they relied on childish social media-level insults which resulted in their reports. This is GitHub, not social media.

I hope what I have explained here is clear to you. If you still disagree, well, unfortunately I won't be responding as the discussion has already ended in the other issue. Cheers!

[webknjaz]

but didn't read

And this person pretends to be on the moral high ground demonstrating supremacy asking others not to make assumptions 🤦🏼

[devrand]

@PeterNjeim such a funny email handle "peterthegreatpeterthegreat" you have, do you really like russian emperors so much?

[PeterNjeim]

such a funny email handle "peterthegreatpeterthegreat" you have, do you really like russian emperors so much?

Lol I made that when I was a small kid, before the internet started requiring you to be 13 years old. "peterthegreat" was already taken so I had to repeat it. I didn't even know he was a real person at the time, I was copying the style of other "the great" people. Thanks for the nostalgia 😄

[zbroyar]

@PeterNjeim thanks for the clarification.

Now, as I understand this rule of your project, - territory belongs to the given country if it claims and controls it, - much better, I see no reason why you think this issue is a spam.

It looks more like friendly bump or heads up because Russia claims and controls Zaporizhzhya, Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson regions of Ukraine.

So, in complete accordance with your own rule you have to mark those regions as belonging to Russia. No?

[PeterNjeim]

thanks for the clarification.

Now, as I understand this rule of your project, - territory belongs to the given country if it claims and controls it, - much better, I see no reason why you think this issue is a spam.

It looks more like friendly bump or heads up because Russia claims and controls Zaporizhzhya, Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson regions of Ukraine.

Please note that I have no affiliation to this project.

I said this issue is spam because the person who made it made the exact same issue (#810) earlier, that issue was closed so he made another one.

So, in complete accordance with your own rule you have to mark those regions as belonging to Russia. No?

I must clarify that it isn't "my rule", it is the rule of neutrality, and accuracy of what's on the ground. The rule is also the rule used on Wikipedia, for example, I didn't make it (but I do agree with it).

I understand you want to continue the discussion, but as I already said, the discussion happened in #810 already. I answer your question somewhere in there.

But, since you're so nice to me (unlike the others), I'll repeat myself here: Yes, the territory that Russia controls in the newly annexed regions should be marked as Russian (that means most of Luhansk, some of Donetsk, some of Zaporizhzhia, and some of Kherson). The territory Russia controls that they do not claim (like parts of Mykolaiv) should not be shown as part of Russia.

Thanks for your time

[PeterNjeim]

such a funny email handle "peterthegreatpeterthegreat" you have, do you really like russian emperors so much?

@devrand I actually contacted Microsoft, I made it when I was 9 years old lol. I can't even believe I was stuck to the computer all those years ago 🤣

[monfera]

#810 doesn't seem to be the same issue as this one. That covers other areas; different areas even in Ukraine; and a different claim status on Ukrainian land. Russia's claim they titled "annexation", relating to the Crimea-like handling of another four oblasts, happened a couple of days ago only, while #810 was filed half a month ago.

I wonder how the set intersection requirement you described above (a country needs to both claim and control a given area) would work here. As both sides claim all Ukrainian areas in question, would it boil down to ever current, daily line of control in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk? The front lines continue to move in all four of these.

Also, according to some reports, what Russia claims to have annexed (the full oblasts, or only the parts they occupied on that specific day?) isn't even clear.

While there have to be rules about which country a specific area belongs to on a map, the current rules just happen to serve Kremlin interests very well. This is regrettable as it benefits the invader, war criminal. Also, rules are made and codified by people, so let's not assume it's an immutable rule. It's not clear why the current rules are preferred.

It is also regrettable that the mostly consensual rules, by which the international community abide, are ignored for the rules of the repo. Crimea belonging to Russia is recognized only by North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Afghanistan and Sudan (iirc). Invading and controlling the Crimean peninsula goes against pretty much all UN agreements (which Russia is signatory of too), and is a direct violation of past agreements involving Ukraine, Russia and the Soviet Union, precisely on Ukraine's borders.

When choosing between two rule sets, why not apply the one that adheres to international standards and agreements, and which does not embolden and provide PR for the imperialist aggressor, while undermining not just the victim but also the rules on which the post-WWII order has built on?

the map can only be changed from the battlefield, not GitHub

This is a troubling and insulting thing to say for several reasons:

• The current gh repo rules are a choice, not divine intervention
• It suggests that "the map" (this repo) is the primary source of truth
• It goes against actual, real life rules which, in effect, say that a country can't just invade and annex (part of) their neighbor
• It is flippant and disrespectful toward those people in Ukraine who defend their country, many of whom died and will die. Of course they would change the battlefield status. Ukraine has been suffering from Russia's war since 2014 and more intensively, since February 24, 2022. Ukrainian defenders die, civilians including childen, women and the elderly die, small children lose their mothers, fathers, siblings or their own limbs while the Russian occupiers torture, rape and kill.

All in all, it'd be great to see a more nuanced stance than "them's the rules, somebody made it at some point and everyone else can get the hell out of here" sprinkled with off-putting remarks such as trying to find ToS violation where there is none; glibly accusing the reporter to not have read the ToS; shrugging that hey, you just need to have folks keep dying on the battlefields against the 2nd largest military power for us to draw your country in line with all international agreements and rules.

Even if it's not the intent, maps can lead to deaths.

[PeterNjeim]

#810 doesn't seem to be the same issue as this one. That covers other areas; different areas even in Ukraine; and a different claim status on Ukrainian land. Russia's claim they titled "annexation", relating to the Crimea-like handling of another four oblasts, happened a couple of days ago only, while #810 was filed half a month ago.

No, it mentions the same oblasts as this one. Just because it mentions even more territories doesn't change how this issue is redundant.

I wonder how the set intersection requirement you described above (a country needs to both claim and control a given area) would work here. As both sides claim all Ukrainian areas in question, would it boil down to ever current, daily line of control in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk? The front lines continue to move in all four of these.

"As both sides claim [...], would it [...]?". This sentence is... odd. The whole point of the dispute criterion is to handle disputes. You can't imply that because there's a dispute, something is confusing about the criterion. Example: rule A exists, rule A doesn't handle scenario B, so rule B is created to handle it. Someone else says: "as we currently have scenario B, how would rule B work?" See how it's an odd question to ask? It would work exactly as the rule says it would work, it's designed to handle this situation, without problem.

Already answered in #810. Recap:

Russia and Ukraine both claim the same land, therefore there is a dispute. Since there's a dispute, you apply the dispute resolution criterion. What does this mean? It means the land controlled by Ukraine will be shown as Ukrainian and the land controlled by Russia will be shown as Russian. I'm honestly not sure how this didn't click for you. Look at Kashmir, look at any other disputed area, the map will show the controlled areas in the disputed claim. Showing anything else would be denying the truth on the ground.

Also, according to some reports, what Russia claims to have annexed (the full oblasts, or only the parts they occupied on that specific day?) isn't even clear.

Correct. In fact, the annexation hasn't even been ratified by Russia yet. Until it becomes law (which is probably this week and will clearly define the annexation), no claim has been made.

While there have to be rules about which country a specific area belongs to on a map, the current rules just happen to serve Kremlin interests very well. This is regrettable as it benefits the invader, war criminal.

Guilt by association logical fallacy. The argument you make here is proof you don't desire an accurate map, rather a map that follows the political foreign policy of other countries. You claim that if a situation is regrettable, it must therefore be denied on the map, and be falsified, and imply that those who don't falsify their own maps "support" the regrettable situation. Natural Earth and Wikipedia want a truthful map, not a political one. If you want Ukraine's point of view, Natural Earth also offers that.

They also "just happen" to serve any country who controls territory in a claim that is disputed. In fact, they "just happen" to serve the interests of the truth on the ground. "Just happens" is not an argument, it's a guilt by association logical fallacy. If it isn't a fallacy, then you're claiming that the rule should only show claims that aren't due to invaders. That means the whole map would have to be deleted as that's the story of every country on Earth. What about India and Pakistan? Who's claim should we show? Both. Anything else would be denying the reality on the ground. Imagine living in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and then a map says you're in India. Not only is it fallacious, it's also irrelevant to this discussion. How would being an invader change how an accurate map would look? It wouldn't. You failed to explain how this is even a factor in an accurate map.

Also, rules are made and codified by people, so let's not assume it's an immutable rule. It's not clear why the current rules are preferred.

This is a false premise. It was clearly explained why the current rules are preferred in, you guessed it, issue #810. Recap:

The current rules are preferred as they don't respect unrealized claims, only realized ones. Why is this desired? Because it shows the truth on the ground. Anything else would be a political map, not an accurate map. The CIA World Factbook for example is a political map, it shows what US foreign policy decides. That means no Taiwan, that means Golan Heights are part of Israel, that means all of Western Sahara is part of Morocco. In the case of Taiwan and Western Sahara, it doesn't represent the truth on the ground. In the case of Israel, it does (and I would assume you would say: "regrettably"). Why should we follow these political rules? They change the map for diplomatic reasons, it's asinine to support politically-tampered maps compared to apolitical, truthful maps.

It is also regrettable that the mostly consensual rules, by which the international community abide, are ignored for the rules of the repo. Crimea belonging to Russia is recognized only by North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Afghanistan and Sudan (iirc).

It's not only ignored by this repository, it's ignored by Wikipedia as well, it's ignored by the United States, by Russia, by Ukraine, by every country on Earth. The fact is there are countries on Earth, such as Taiwan, that most countries don't even recognize. Should we respect the "international community" (remember this refers to governments, not people) and not show Taiwan as a country in this repository? Of course not, as the truth is they are a country, no matter what the "international community" says. You're committing the appeal to authority logical fallacy here.

Ask yourself, is it regrettable that Taiwan is shown as a country? It's not. Make sure you go to the logical conclusions of your broad statements before making them, because if you only focus on a particular area, where the proposal seems good (i.e. to reject Russia's claim), the proposal is terrible in other areas of the world (i.e. to reject Taiwan's existence).

Invading and controlling the Crimean peninsula goes against pretty much all UN agreements (which Russia is signatory of too), and is a direct violation of past agreements involving Ukraine, Russia and the Soviet Union, precisely on Ukraine's borders.

Shifting goalposts logical fallacy. Since when was this map's goal to respect international agreements? The whole point is to make an accurate map, that means ignoring what the law says and showing what the ground says, by definition. Onus is on you to show that a mapmaker should voluntarily intervene and falsify their own map to respect agreements. Remember, the map's goal is to be as accurate as possible, and shouldn't be molded by any other interests.

When choosing between two rule sets, why not apply the one that adheres to international standards and agreements, and which does not embolden and provide PR for the imperialist aggressor, while undermining not just the victim but also the rules on which the post-WWII order has built on?

As explained above, making a map adhere to "international standards" is both impossible and inaccurate. Every country on Earth has their own foreign policy and own recognitions of borders, they conflict with each other. There is no singular "international map". If there were, you'd be using that map instead. For example, the UN publishes its own map of the world, but it: denies Taiwan's existence, denies Palestine's existence, denies Somaliland's existence, denies Kosovo's existence, but interestingly shows the territorial dispute between India, Pakistan, and China, but not between Russia and Ukraine (for Crimea). So it seems to do what you want, deny invaders' claims but still show other, non-invader-related disputes. But it also denies several countries' existences, which I hope you agree is not permittable, as it's untruthful. We need a truthful, accurate map, and that's where Natural Earth and Wikipedia come in.

Think about it for a second, is your only issue with Natural Earth that it shows Russia's claims of Ukrainian land? Would you be happy with the exact same map but without Russia's claims in Ukraine? Don't you see how that would mean you agree with Natural Earth's rule but just want to make an exception? Because throughout your whole comment you seem to not want Natural Earth at all, you want something like "UN Earth". You already have that, and it's a bad map, and that's why nobody uses it. Isn't that crazy? The "international standards" map is actually a map that is rejected as bad, and for good reason, because it's untruthful. This is my point I'm trying to make to you, Natural Earth is here to show the truth on the ground, not follow international standards, as there are already maps that follow those standards. Why is Natural Earth so popular if maps that follow international standards exist already? Because they don't want maps that follow international standards, evidently.

The truth matters more than agreements. You have failed to show any evidence for how following these agreements will result in a more accurate map. In fact, it seems you've implied that you don't want an accurate map, your only issue is that you don't want invaders' claims to be shown on maps. Ok then, that's not what Natural Earth is. Natural Earth respects all realized claims, that means invaders' claims, it means self-determinationists' claims, it means peace agreements' claims, it means any claim that's realized. You want to make a moral exception to exclude invaders' claims, that's laudable, but simply not the truth on the ground, and so is rejected.

the map can only be changed from the battlefield, not GitHub

This is a troubling and insulting thing to say for several reasons:

• The current gh repo rules are a choice, not divine intervention

As explained above, the reason the current choice was chosen is because the UN already made the choice you want, and why would Natural Earth just be a copy of the UN map? Use the UN map if you want it. Natural Earth's (and Wikipedia's) goal is to show the truth on the ground. That's the goal. It's a different goal than the UN. In light of that, you'd now realise that it isn't really a "choice", because there's only so many ways to show the truth on the ground. So while you try to play it off as me "playing god", in fact, it's the truth that limits the choices available, and the truth eliminates the chance of using international recognition as a factor, as recognition is a belief (and usually a political one), and not in any way representative of the truth on the ground. Please don't make the accusation that it's divine and unchangeable, the goal is the truth and what you propose doesn't comply with that goal, it complies with a different (and laudable) goal, but not the same goal.

On a related note, Wikipedia has a policy of no censorship. It means no person, no group, and no agreement (law) can change what Wikipedia shows. This means Wikipedia cannot simply ignore Russia's control of Crimea, as that would be a form of censorship of the truth on the ground.

• It suggests that "the map" (this repo) is the primary source of truth

I don't know where that was suggested in the sentence you're replying to. But to elaborate anyways:

This map (and Wikipedia), aspire to follow the truth. You committed the strawman logical fallacy. Remember, Natural Earth is popular because of its pro-truth policy, not despite it. There are other maps that follow your criterion, and they aren't popular. I can only assume because people want accurate maps.

• It goes against actual, real life rules which, in effect, say that a country can't just invade and annex (part of) their neighbor

It actually doesn't "go against" that rule. This is easy to explain via an analogy. Let's say murder is illegal. I run a news agency. Let's say a murder occurs. Should I publish a story about it? Yes, I should, I should show the truth about this murder. This doesn't mean that I support murder, and "go against" the law that prohibits murder. In this case, if we apply your logic, you'd want the news about the murder to be supressed as it would increase the notoriety of the murderer. Some people believe you should instead report the murder but not the murderer's name to prevent this. In our case, it's either we name Russia (and as you said it will be PR for them), or we just label it "Crimea" and pretend no one controls it (like Western Sahara's case, on some maps). Now that's a real alternative choice, you can pursue that if you would like. But I assume you don't like that, and instead want to show Ukraine as controlling Crimea. Unfortunately this would go against the goal of having a truthful map, so it's not an option here. I hope this answers your first bullet point, as this is another choice to consider.

But I personally support reporting the murderer's name in the news, just as I support showing it as controlled by Russia, if you wanted my opinion on the "ambiguity to not violate the truth" choice that I presented in the previous paragraph.

Another false implication in your statement is that the truth isn't an actual, real life rule. I aspire to be truthful in my communication, that's why I don't make logical fallacies against others, despite them making logical fallacies against me. I don't stoop to social-media-level insults and "arguments" (fallacies). This is a rule I abide by, others... not so much lol.

• It is flippant and disrespectful toward those people in Ukraine who defend their country, many of whom died and will die. Of course they would change the battlefield status. Ukraine has been suffering from Russia's war since 2014 and more intensively, since February 24, 2022. Ukrainian defenders die, civilians including children, women and the elderly die, small children lose their mothers, fathers, siblings or their own limbs while the Russian occupiers torture, rape and kill.

I said a truthful map can only be changed on the battlefield. That is a fact. The beautiful thing about facts is that you can't imply anything from them. I could for example say "in America, according to the FBI, African-Americans committed 39% of murders in 2019, despite making up 13% of the population". Someone could make the logically fallacious reply "you're racist", but in fact no such implication was made. You seem to have believed a similar implication that was not made. It's saddening that you believe I think Ukrainians should die or anything disgusting like that. But it's also saddening that you're willing to falsely accuse me of it as well. For this reason, you've been reported for spreading false accusations against me

I made a simple statement of fact, one that you couldn't refute. It is indeed the battlefield that changes the map, what part of that has anything to do with disrespect for a nation of people you have not explained, you merely claimed. All countries on Earth are a result of endless wars and fighting, and mass suffering, to pretend otherwise is to be against the truth. I have made no mention of support for Russia in any of my comments, yet the number 1 comment people keep making here is that "you secretly support Russia". These social-media-level insults are abusive and will not be tolerated. GitHub isn't social media, keep the unevidenced insults out of here.

To counter you: it's flippant to Taiwanese, Pakistani Kashmiris, Indian Kashmiris, Palestinian, Sahrawi, Kosovar, and other peoples that you think you can change the rules to deny their existence. I know you actually don't deny their existence, believe me I am not accusing you of such, just that you are misguided as the "international agreements" you support aren't the amazing thing you claim they are. They deny people's existence to promote diplomacy between the leading world powers. It's not a truth-supporting criterion and thus is rejected.

All in all, it'd be great to see a more nuanced stance than "them's the rules, somebody made it at some point and everyone else can get the hell out of here" sprinkled with off-putting remarks such as trying to find ToS violation where there is none; glibly accusing the reporter to not have read the ToS;

Strawman logical fallacy. I didn't say "these are the rules, I'm not going to let you make counterarguments, we must follow them and get out of here now". It's odd how after tens of paragraphs of explanation and rebuttal in issue #810, you just dismiss it all as me saying "I don't want to argue please get out of here". What? I've done the opposite of that. This information will be used in my report against your account.

hey, you just need to have folks keep dying on the battlefields against the 2nd largest military power for us to draw your country in line with all international agreements and rules.

You're trying to polarize this issue, creating a false "us vs. them" mentality. I never created that mentality, in fact, I very clearly countered the claims made against the criterion, and that's it. I never grouped people together, or polarized anything. In fact, I reject groupings of people. I always believed in empirical data, not looking at a small sample and making vast generalizations from it. In this case, you saw one person (myself) make an argument and referred to me as "us". I already said I don't contribute to this project, I'm only here because I learned about Natural Earth when trying to make my own Wikipedia-style map (orthographic) a few days ago. I went to the issues and saw #810. That's how I ended up here. When you talk to me, you're talking to me, not anybody else, not "this project", not a group of people. You can't refer to me as "us" as I'm one person, but you try to make it seem like you're fighting "the other side". This is untrue, we're debating about a criterion for an accurate map. The discussion is not any larger than that, and any attempts to make it seem larger will be flatly rejected.

If you weren't satisfied with the current criterion, I came up with another criterion I explained earlier, which is that you leave all disputed territories ambiguous, regardless of control. That means Western Sahara, Golan Heights, Kashmir, Crimea, (and soon after the ratification of annexation) 4 Ukrainian oblasts. This way the map doesn't lie, but it also doesn't tell the whole truth by hiding behind ambiguity. This is acceptable for some people, potentially yourself, which is why I present it.

I never made any broad points about military powers and international agreements, you did. In fact, I said I was disgusted by the social media tactics being used on a non-social media platform. You seem to continue to bring the social media, logical-fallacy-ridden arguments here, and it's honestly something I've never seen before. You read my comments, which simply (yes, simply) explain how in order for a map to be accurate it must respect the simple (yes, simple) rule of "control + claim", and what you got from it was "you support the invasion of Ukraine and you like seeing Ukrainians be killed". Such drastic, appalling, false claims are not tolerated. This is abuse. I have made no such claims, you're the one making disgusting claims. Reported.

Even if it's not the intent, maps can lead to deaths.

I'm honestly confused by this statement. How can it "lead to" death? This is yet another unevidenced statement you've made. Instead of assuming good faith (which is way out of the question at this point), I'm going to assume you're saying this to imply that I want to see death. This will also be used in my report against you.

Wow, that was a lot of debunking (and utterly destroying your disgusting, lie-ridden logically fallacious statements and false accusations against me, which are a grave violation of GitHub Terms of Service, which you seem not to care about at all, since you enjoy making false, disgusting allegations against others as if you're on social media, which you aren't).

You started off your comment being wanting-of debate. But you strayed off course and decided to express your inner social media. Unfortunate. No further replies will be made.

[nvkelso]

Recapping and expanding on my comments in #810...

No, Natural Earth won't immediately update to show Russia's annexation of the 4 additional Ukrainian regions (in addition to the 2 original annexations in the Crimea peninsula). Natural Earth is a volunteer project with once or twice per year updates (not day to day), and the situation on the ground is extremely fluid and it would be premature to update either the default boundaries or the point-of-view boundaries. I will however keep this issue open as Natural Earth will eventually make an update here.

As comments above point out, Russia doesn't actually control all the Ukrainian territory it asserts claim to, Russia's control is often over only part of a region instead of a full region, and the military line-of-control is shifting day-to-day – so where would you draw a new western boundary line (and claim polygons and POV polygons) and not have it immediately be out of date? It is clear though the Russia <> Ukraine admin-0 border in the east is now disputed.

To recap Natural Earth's disputed territory policy:

To quote:

"Natural Earth draws de facto boundaries according to our disputed boundaries policy. We also mark controversial boundaries as disputed, and show claim lines around disputed areas. Data is tagged to encourage remixing to match user’s particular needs and several premixed themes are available."

To further quote:

"Natural Earth draws boundaries of sovereign states according to de facto (“in fact”) status rather than de jure (“by law”). We show who actually controls the situation on the ground because it turns out laws vary country to country, and countries are only loosely bound by international law in their dealings with each other. While our de facto policy does not please everyone, it is rigorous and self consistent. Our project’s premise is to “Increase geographic literacy by making it easy to compile and publish maps from high-quality, free, and open data.” Natural Earth data is used by millions of people in every country around the globe. Over time we’ve added name localizations for 26 popular locales via Wikidata to meet those users in their language" which is paired with the different political point-of-view download options.

A walk down memory lane about Ukraine and Russia via the project's CHANGELOG:

• v4.0.0 (Oct 2017) - Three years after Russia annexed Crimea, Natural Earth updated to reflect that change in the de facto situation. To this day, Russia continues to control the Crimea territory (including with a multi-billion dollar bridge), and has incorporated the two states there into its federal system, distinguishing it from several of the other proxy territory wars it's fought, say with Georgia.
• v5.0.0 (Dec 2021) - Added point-of-view tagging to support several dozen popular (or unpopular as the case may be!) worldviews for country boundaries. This reflects a country's views of itself, and of 100 other disputed boundaries around the world. It's paired with name localization. This included a Ukrainian POV because of the Crimea conflict to juxtapose the Russian POV. Ukrainian name localization support was also added.
• v5.0.1 (March 2022) - point-of-view updates to reflect the resumption of larger Ukraine <> Russia war and changing global attitudes around the conflict. Net result: more countries side with Ukraine's view, a few with Russia's.
• v5.1.x (May 2022) - refinement to the POV, including for Ukraine, based on continued evolution of global attitudes, including a new TLC point-of-view config making it easier to remix.

In the lead up to the 2022 Ukraine <> Russia war, and during development of the v5.0.0 release there was discussion in Github Issue #391, where I heard and responded to feedback from Ukraine.

To be clear: I am not a fan of Putin's Russia. I personally think what he is doing in Ukraine is horrible and against my own values. I have also donated to a Ukrainian refugee organization. But to help resolve the conflict there does need to be an objective de facto acknowledgement of who controls and asserts what about the territory the ground – not a singular partisan viewpoint. Natural Earth includes many viewpoints now, and you can choose one and even diff between them.

[worc]

Defying everyone and dying on the hill for your own personal interpretation of "de facto" boundaries is pretty irritating at the end of the day, personal politics aside. It'd be nice to have data that's actually compatible with ISO or god forbid legacy FIPS systems.

The default stance would more reasonably be to follow an international standard, and then augment that with disputed or un-coded territories. The way things are structured now, any work that combines natural earth and any coding system must include post-processing to bring natural earth up to spec.

[devrand]

to @nvkelso:
Well, unfortunately your words about your values don't matter. What is really matters - it's your denial to make internationally/UN accepted borders as default in NatEarth to prevent mass proliferation of maps without Crimea as a part of Ukraine in many libraries and individual works.

So you've choose your stand, and by all means your decision is in favor of Russia and its war of aggression against Ukraine. .

[webknjaz]

where I heard and responded to disregarded feedback from Ukraine.

Here, corrected that for you.

To be clear: I am not a fan of Putin's Russia. I personally think what he is doing in Ukraine is horrible and against my own values. I have also donated to a Ukrainian refugee organization.

Is this a geographer's version of “I have a black friend, so I can't be racist”? Really? Elon Musk attempted this the other day on Twitter, he is not a good role model to follow.
Just to be clear: your current and past behavior is:

1. Offending to Ukrainians. You are bullying 40+ million people now.
2. Not of an ally, but quite vice versa — it aligns with the ideas of r*ssian nazis that terrorize and murder Ukrainians right now.

But to help resolve the conflict there does need to be an objective de facto acknowledgement of who controls and asserts what about the territory the ground – not a singular partisan viewpoint. Natural Earth includes many viewpoints now, and you can choose one and even diff between them.

This is an excuse that does not resolve anything, but only demonstrates ignorance. The objective truth is that the users don't know upfront that they are supposed to know and understand that POVs exist and can be changed, and what the differences are. For as long as this is an implicitly selected default, this project is controlling what the majority of the users get. And then, this is also used as a tool to spread the terrorist propaganda in media. Sometimes intentionally, but oftentimes because the users aren't qualified to know that this can be changed.

De-facto, this makes a huge effect in that it helps the ruscists justify the genocides. And therefore this project is absolutely part of a problem.

Let me try another metaphor. Would you be showing statistics of rape with a title "These women got themselves into trouble by wearing short shirts?" and when someone complains, you'd tell them that they can change the POV by optionally putting a sticker with another title saying "Rape shouldn't happen". Looks like you're doing this right here, right now. Why is it acceptable for the society to call out mansplaining but not telling the Ukrainians that they don't actually know what's happening where they live?

If there was no default and the end-users had to consciously select POV, this would be on them. The default makes it this project's fault. Don't make excuses. Actions speak louder than words.

[cawa-93]

@nvkelso You should at least make a clear, prominent banner at naturalearthdata.com "The shapes of some countries may differ from those internationally recognized standarts. Details here" with reference to your politics.

[zkochan]

The internationally recognized borders should be displayed by default. It is beyond my comprehension why the authors choose to legitimize unlawful territorial conquests in the 21st century. This bears huge reputational risks to the authors and I am sure some visa restrictions could arise from it. Also, I am sure in some countries there could be legal consequences of these actions.

If you do keep this policy. You probably need to put huge disclaimers everywhere but even that might be not enough.

[osemych]

If the author want to stay neutral, than let's remove all international borders and leave just continents on a map.

If author follows international/UN rules of defining states border, than he must flow international law, defining these borders.

Sham "referendums" are not recognized as legitimate by international law, and thus, where not supported by majority of civilized states. To be more precise, just two countries defined these sham "referendums" as legitimate. One is russia itself, and second one is North Korea with its totalitarian dictatorship regimen. Does not seams as author's neutrality to me.

And yes, there are legal consequences in Ukraine and some other EU counties, maybe others as well, for someone who supports violation of territorial integrity of a sovereign state.

@nvkelso the choose is up to you. To support internationally defined borders, or to support war crimes, genocide, and territorial occupation by military force.

[mourner]

But to help resolve the conflict there does need to be an objective de facto acknowledgement of who controls and asserts what about the territory the ground

@nvkelso there are widely established projects specifically for the purpose of reflecting the situation on the ground that change multiple times per day — https://deepstatemap.live and https://liveuamap.com to name a few. You say that you want this project to objectively reflect control on the ground, but at the same time:

Natural Earth is a volunteer project with once or twice per year updates

Three years after Russia annexed Crimea, Natural Earth updated to reflect that change

What kind of nonsensical, self-contradictory stance is this? It sounds so incredibly stupid and crazy (in addition to actually assisting genocide) that I have a hard time believing you follow it in good faith. I'd understand if you wanted to provide some kind of (severely outdated) military control on the ground data as one of the many optional layers, but to expose this as the default, and double down on it after everything that happened? The data that people use for educating children all over the world, creating media stories, and making all other kinds of all-purpose maps? It's not only nonsensical, it's cruel.

[ProfessorPatrickSlatraigh]

To @nvkelso

Due to official decree by Vladimir Putin about annexation of Zaporizhzhya, Kherson, Donets'k and Lugans'k regions of Ukraine you need to designate these areas as Russian territories by default in Natural Earth, ASAP.

Remember, it follows from your explanation of "de facto boundaries" policy: "If a country officially annexes a disputed territory like Crimea and it occupies it on the ground then yes it'll show up ... as part of Russia for the default point-of-view"

Thank you for supporting expansion of Russian Empire with Natural Earth data since 2014, yours truly, MFA of Russian Federation

Not sure that this^ will age well.
... As the Dutch were fond of saying to Germans after WWII, "My uncle wants his bicycle back."

[devrand]

Well, that was a sarcasm of course. My intend was to show an absurdity of selective use for "control on the ground" principle that @nvkelso applied only for a Crimea, but not for other occupied/annexed parts of Ukraine.
Unfortunately, @nvkelso choose wrong side of this conflict and decided to support Russian aggression against Ukraine (which started back at 2014).
You can read some arguments above in this thread, i.e.
#812 (comment)
#812 (comment)
etc

[WarthogARJ]

Due to official decree by Vladimir Putin about annexation of Zaporizhzhya, Kherson, Donets'k and Lugans'k regions of Ukraine you need to designate these areas as Russian territories by default in Natural Earth, ASAP.

Initially I thought you were a Russian Troll, but your website seems to say otherwise.
It's a mistake to use sarcasm here: it's an emotive subject, and sarcasm just clouds the issue.

But Putin is under investigation as a war criminal, and even just following Russia's own laws, he has broken the law.

[WarthogARJ]

The internationally recognized borders should be displayed by default. It is beyond my comprehension why the authors choose to legitimize unlawful territorial conquests in the 21st century. This bears huge reputational risks to the authors and I am sure some visa restrictions could arise from it. Also, I am sure in some countries there could be legal consequences of these actions.

If you do keep this policy. You probably need to put huge disclaimers everywhere but even that might be not enough.

Not true.
You need to read the Policy Statement.
As well as the many methods they have in place to adjust the borders to reflect the "truth" as the BEHOLDER desires.

You need to be realistic here, and not naive.
This is a volunteer-driven resource, and they are trying to be as objective, flexible and neutral as possible.

Unfortunately, Putin has managed to hang onto large parts of Ukraine after his invasions of 2014 and 2022.
Fortunately the Ukrainians, with US/NATO and other (Australia, NZ etc) support are pushing him back.

[WarthogARJ]

Recapping and expanding on my comments in #810...

No, Natural Earth won't immediately update to show Russia's annexation of the 4 additional Ukrainian regions (in addition to the 2 original annexations in the Crimea peninsula). Natural Earth is a volunteer project with once or twice per year updates (not day to day), and the situation on the ground is extremely fluid and it would be premature to update either the default boundaries or the point-of-view boundaries. I will however keep this issue open as Natural Earth will eventually make an update here.

As comments above point out, Russia doesn't actually control all the Ukrainian territory it asserts claim to, Russia's control is often over only part of a region instead of a full region, and the military line-of-control is shifting day-to-day – so where would you draw a new western boundary line (and claim polygons and POV polygons) and not have it immediately be out of date? It is clear though the Russia <> Ukraine admin-0 border in the east is now disputed.

To recap Natural Earth's disputed territory policy:

To quote:

"Natural Earth draws de facto boundaries according to our disputed boundaries policy. We also mark controversial boundaries as disputed, and show claim lines around disputed areas. Data is tagged to encourage remixing to match user’s particular needs and several premixed themes are available."

To further quote:

"Natural Earth draws boundaries of sovereign states according to de facto (“in fact”) status rather than de jure (“by law”). We show who actually controls the situation on the ground because it turns out laws vary country to country, and countries are only loosely bound by international law in their dealings with each other. While our de facto policy does not please everyone, it is rigorous and self consistent. Our project’s premise is to “Increase geographic literacy by making it easy to compile and publish maps from high-quality, free, and open data.” Natural Earth data is used by millions of people in every country around the globe. Over time we’ve added name localizations for 26 popular locales via Wikidata to meet those users in their language" which is paired with the different political point-of-view download options.

A walk down memory lane about Ukraine and Russia via the project's CHANGELOG:

• v4.0.0 (Oct 2017) - Three years after Russia annexed Crimea, Natural Earth updated to reflect that change in the de facto situation. To this day, Russia continues to control the Crimea territory (including with a multi-billion dollar bridge), and has incorporated the two states there into its federal system, distinguishing it from several of the other proxy territory wars it's fought, say with Georgia.
• v5.0.0 (Dec 2021) - Added point-of-view tagging to support several dozen popular (or unpopular as the case may be!) worldviews for country boundaries. This reflects a country's views of itself, and of 100 other disputed boundaries around the world. It's paired with name localization. This included a Ukrainian POV because of the Crimea conflict to juxtapose the Russian POV. Ukrainian name localization support was also added.
• v5.0.1 (March 2022) - point-of-view updates to reflect the resumption of larger Ukraine <> Russia war and changing global attitudes around the conflict. Net result: more countries side with Ukraine's view, a few with Russia's.
• v5.1.x (May 2022) - refinement to the POV, including for Ukraine, based on continued evolution of global attitudes, including a new TLC point-of-view config making it easier to remix.

In the lead up to the 2022 Ukraine <> Russia war, and during development of the v5.0.0 release there was discussion in Github Issue #391, where I heard and responded to feedback from Ukraine.

To be clear: I am not a fan of Putin's Russia. I personally think what he is doing in Ukraine is horrible and against my own values. I have also donated to a Ukrainian refugee organization. But to help resolve the conflict there does need to be an objective de facto acknowledgement of who controls and asserts what about the territory the ground – not a singular partisan viewpoint. Natural Earth includes many viewpoints now, and you can choose one and even diff between them.

Good reply.
And thanks very much for your efforts with this website/resource.

Your Policy Statement, and actions are excellent: keep on keeping on....
Don't sweat it if there are always some people who are unreasonable or naive.

To repeat an idea I made in another Issue, perhaps you could add a few simple steps to support the "de facto" classification.

**_Let's say we have Country A and B, and Region C: which is claimed by both A & B.

Test 1: Can an "average" citizen from the given Country travel to Region C, and exercise the same freedoms as they can in their home country?
Test 2: Can an "average" citizen from Region C travel to the given Country and exercise the same rights as they can in Region C?

Using these Tests, one would classify Crimea as "de facto" part of Russia (but NOT "de jure" applying most jurisdictions).
And Taiwan as independent, and not part of "Mainland China"._**

In addition, maybe you need to side-step the issue of being accused of being biased by using other terms than "de jure" and "de facto".
There is an interesting concept I just saw in Wikpedia: [](url)

One could classify Region status by "Declarative" or "Constitutive".
"Constitutive" is "de jure", with a few levels, as is shown in the Wikipedia site.
Could use number of UN Countries that explicitly either Recognise it ("+") or do Not ("-".

"Declarative" is "de facto" with at least two different options.
I say two, because anything that is "Declarative" is always going to be "Disputed", and will have several POV's.
In effect, you have "Defacto-1", "Defacto-2" etc.

A given State/Territory has two overall Classifications: Declarative and Constitutive.

Examples:
Israel: Constitutive (-28)
Declarative: Israel or "non-state" (Palestine? Driven into the sea? etc etc).

Taiwan: Constitutive (+13)
Declarative: Taiwan or Mainland China

Crimea: Constitutive part of Ukraine (+100) (Ref. UN vote of 27/Mar/2014)
Declarative: Ukraine or Russia

North Korea: Constitutive (-7)

South Korea: Constitutive (+192,-1)

USA: Constitutive (+193)

You could assign an overall percent to UN recognition, by assuming anyone who did not explicitly express a view is in (nominal/de-facto) recognition of the State.

[worc]

they are trying to be as objective, flexible and neutral as possible.

that's not true at all. the maps provided here are singular files with biased viewpoints baked in at every level.

there's clearly an ISO-3166 foundation here, but then that's patched with the ISO_A2_EH and ISO_A3_EH fields—"eh" as in "eh, close enough." and then on top of that there are some select "de facto" assumptions made, but not others, this thread being the most obvious example. kashmir between pakistan, india and china; abyei between sudan and south sudan; and the western sahara region are at least three others where you can find some de facto assumptions being made.

and it's not exactly flexible. these patches and assumptions are included in the admin 0 and admin 1 maps without any clear separation from de jure or ISO definitions.

a better approach to flexibility would take each of those layers of decision-making and turn them into discrete map layers / shapefiles / geojson.

[nvkelso]

The discussion here has veered into uncharted territories, as it were. I'm locking comments on this issue for 6 months and will start blocking GitHub users who can't maintain decorum.