Proposal:Common name format in Republic of Srpska

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Common name format in the Republika Srpska
Proposal status: Draft (under way)
Proposed by: Michalfabik
Applies to: node, way, relation
Definition: This proposal aims to introduce a common format for the name tag value in the administrative entity of Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Draft started: 2020-11-05

Proposal

We, the OSM community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, hereby propose to change values of name=* tags within the Republika Srpska to:

(TODO: pick one, see discussion page)

Latin script only, e.g. name=Banja Luka

Pros

  • Readily readable to most users in the Western world
  • Short (Latin-script characters take up less space on average than Cyrillic characters, when printed)

Cons

  • Does not reflect OTG situation very well, given that Cyrillic script is on the whole preferred in RS
  • Likely to cause edit wars as some Serb users see Latin script as suppressing the Serb national identity



Cyrillic script only, e.g. name=Бања Лука

Pros

  • Reflects OTG situation reasonably well

Cons

  • Speakers of many Western languages cannot read it.
  • Very likely to cause edit wars as some (mostly Bosniak and Croat users) see Cyrillic script as a tool of Serb nationalism.



Cyrillic script and Latin script, e.g. name=Бања Лука / Banja Luka

Pros

  • Best reflects OTG situation

Cons

  • Long and unwieldy
  • Technically not a name (tagging for the renderer)



Latin script and Cyrillic script , e.g. name=Banja Luka / Бања Лука

Pros

  • Reflects the OTG situation somewhat by including both scripts but not in the "correct" order

Cons

  • Long and unwieldy
  • Technically not a name (tagging for the renderer)
  • Moderately likely to cause edit wars - some Serb users will probably want the Cyrillic version first



No name=* tag at all, only leave name:XX=* language variants.

Pros

  • All disputes magically gone

Cons

  • Not an established practice, likely to cause all sorts of issues
  • Users would likely keep "fixing" it

Rationale

Introduction

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) consists of two major largely autonomous territories ("entities"): the Bosniak- and Croat-controlled Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) and the Serb-controlled Republika Srpska (RS). BiH has three de iure distinct (but de facto almost identical) official languages: Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian.

Situation On the Ground

The official languages in FBiH are Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian (in this order) and official scripts are Latin script and Cyrillic script (in this order).

The official languages in RS are "language of the Serb people", "language of the Bosniak people" and "language of the Croat people" (in this order), thus worded to avoid the politically charged expressions "Bosnian language" and "Bosniak language". For all practical purposes, this is equivalent to Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian, respectively. The official scripts in RS are Cyrillic script and Latin script (in this order).

Note: "in this order" only means that the languages and scripts are listed in the given order in the constitutions of the respective entities. The law does not explicitly mandate a specific order e.g. when printing multilingual texts. The constitutions do not explicitly mandate a specific order but lower-level laws exist that prescribe this order in specific situations, such as e.g. traffic signs.

Croatian is written in Latin script exclusively.

Bosnian can be (de iure) written in both Latin and Cyrillic scripts but Cyrillic script is almost never used in practice, except when required by law.

Serbian can be (de iure) written in both Cyrillic and Latin scripts. Cyrillic is strongly preferred in official use, Latin is seldom used unless specifically required by law. In the commercial and private spheres, the shares of Cyrillic and Latin are approximately equal, largely dictated by factors such as the writing's purpose, the author's political views, cultural background or level of education, or simply by fashion.

Situation in OSM

The usage of the name=* tag in RS is inconsistent. The main variations that have been observed are name=<Latin>, name=<Cyrillic>, name=<Cyrillic> / <Latin> and name=<Latin> / <Cyrillic>. This causes a number of issues:

  • Recurring edit wars.
  • Data inconsistency, possibly leading to malfunctions in consumer apps, reduced usability of QA tools etc.
  • Incidental violation of the "On the Ground" rule. The various forms of the name=* value do not reflect any objective properties of the tagged objects (such as e.g. higher concentration of a particular language minority in a particular area or similar). They only reflect the mappers' varying personal preferences when tagging.

Applies to

The change described above can be applied mechanically to the name=* tag of the following objects within the Republika Srpska:


Special care MUST be taken when treating the following objects, as exception may exist:


Privately run or owned objects MUST NOT be affected.

No action is required within the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as the usage there is consistently name=<Latin> (with very rare exceptions), reflecting the almost-universal usage of Latin script in the real world.

Comments

Five possible name formats are listed above. Please feel free to add more if you can think of any and/or expand the Pros/Cons sections. Please vote on the discussion page.

Please use the discussion page if you wish to comment on the proposal itself, such as its usefulness, justifiability etc., as opposed to improving its contents.

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