Organised Editing/Activities/Snap

About Us

Snap Inc. is a camera company based in the United States and founded in 2011. On Snap Map, launched in 2017, you can view the location associated with Snaps submitted to Snap Map. Users can share their locations with each other and see what’s going on around them.

Disputed Border Tagging Project

Snap is working to ensure that disputed borders are properly tagged and mapped. Maps often require showing different borders depending on the country the user is in. OpenStreetMap generally maps borders as the on the ground situation, but many disputed areas are also mapped out as well. By ensuring that these basic tags are correct and by adding optional point-of-view or worldview tags, downstream users can use OSM directly to create country specific map views. Previous discussion and a more thorough explanation on this project can be found in nvk’s diary posts here and here.

Cleanup process

The cleanup process will consist of three main steps:

1. Add/modify/delete tags on ways:
   • disputed=yes which is generally supported by many renderers as a dashed line. This data exists in OSM today.
   • disputed_by=AA;BB;CC to list disputant viewpoints for the way, like MA;PS;SA. This allows custom renderers to turn “off” the line for that country’s viewpoint. There are a few examples of this data in OSM today which we will expand.
   • admin_level:AA=4;6 This is rare and only used if the claiming country views the de-facto country boundary instead as a region or county line.
2. Add/modify/delete way’s membership in relations
   • Ensure relation is type=boundary, or add new relation of that type. This data exists in OSM today for the country polygons, but we’ll be adding additional relations for the disputed sections.
   • Give the relation a name=* value like Extent of Western Sahara claim with Morocco
3. Ensure relation has the right tags
   • boundary=disputed or boundary=claim as appropriate
   • claimed_by=DD;EE;FF to list which  ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes claim this frontier limit (but does not control it), like EH
   • disputed_by=GG;HH;II lists disputant viewpoints for the way, like MA;PS;SA
   • recognized_by=XX;YY;ZZ to indicate which ISO country codes, even though they don’t claim the territory, recognize the claim and should see it in their viewpoint as a country/region/county, like DZ.

Tooling

Overpass API will be used to download the borders while JOSM will be used to make the actual edits. The OSM diary’s linked above have more details about the workflow.

Changeset hashtag

All related changesets for this project will be tagged with #disputed_by_claimed_by.

Mapping Team

These users will be carrying out the edits. We will update this list if additional users are added to the project.

• nvk (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)
• stepps00 (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)
• chaseli3 (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)
• mmel0 (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)
• Jeff Underwood (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)
• Mcsickel10 (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)

Feedback

We are always open to community feedback on our work. Feel free to leave a changeset comment, message, or reach out to us directly at osm@snapchat.com.