this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2026
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The 'OG' online map platform, MapQuest, says it won't change the name of Lake Ontario (www.businessinsider.com)
submitted 4 days ago by ardi60@reddthat.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] diverging@piefed.social 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It depends on which map you are looking at. Anyone could take the OSM data and create a map that prefers to show official_name:en-US, when available.

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yeah, and?

  1. If you actually edit OSM, you know there's zero compelling reason to make an application that prefers official_name:en-us. Want to know how I know? Because instead of wasting my time making something up to be outraged at, I went and looked up how often this key shows up. It's six (it shows five, but it hasn't updated for Lake Ontario yet). In the entire world among billions of key uses, this one is used on six objects. This will not ever happen; it's complete nonsense.

Even if it were made (it will not be),

  1. Nobody would use it. Literally what on Earth usefulness could it possibly have within the already niche ecosystem that is OpenStreetMap? My dude, my guy, if they were targeting bullshit names Trump made up with an EO, they could just soft fork an existing OSM application and then hardcode in "Gulf of America" and "Lake America".

And most importantly,

  1. It doesn't matter. That's what the official_name key exists for – to distinguish it from the name people actually use. That's why it's a separate key to begin with.

You're complaining about OpenStreetMap being accurate, and in order to do that, you have to invent some fever dream application that nobody would ever create and nobody would ever use – and that even were they to create it, they could've accomplished it more easily by just hardcoding six values.

"When available". lol, lmao even