OpenStreetMap
Taken to its logical conclusion, this post by Frederik Ramm suggests exactly that - delete administrative boundaries that are not marked on the ground: http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/2012-December/010026.html
TLDR: the anti-importers are coming for your data.
Discussion
Comment from z-dude on 30 December 2012 at 14:19
When it comes to International Boundaries, you will always have some disagreement. The China-Japan dispute over some islands is one example. The invasion of a central american beach due to a Google error is another one.
When it comes to Marine boundaries, the robot generated 12nm line used by Openstreetmap , while close to a country’s claimed territorial sea, can differ from what is actually claimed by a country. I don’t think my Canada has released the nautical charts under an open license like the rest of Geogratis data, so it may be some time for the robot generated lines to be replaced by something more official.
There area also overlaps over claimed territories by countries. The International Boundary commission, which has thousands of precisely placed markers between US and Canada, (accurate to centimeters) has a 5 mile gap in the gulf of Maine causing a ‘Gray Zone’ when it comes to where the US or Canada really is. OSM shows 2 different lines in the Gray Zone. When you look at the gulf using the USGS topo overlay, you get a third and 4th set of lines in the gray zone, I’m pretty sure some the lines in OSM are completly off.
Also, with Marine boundaries, you have Territorial waters, internal waters, and the EEZ (exclusive economic zone), so which of those lines should be used on the country’s relation.
There are also economic boundaries, such as who owns mineral and oil rights in the melting Arctic.
I’d like to see things like the International Date line, Exclusive Economic Zones and some treaty lines added to the map. http://www.state.gov/e/oes/ocns/opa/c28187.htm The international date line will be tricky to map as the slippymap is highly spring loaded at 180 degrees.
In the Gulf of Maine, the current boundaries have a ‘disputed’ tag in the gray zone. I think other disputed areas where there is overlap should use that tag. That way, boaters can steer clear of places like Iran and North Korea.
With OSM being more mainstream, I’d prefer to see more lines on the map, and now fewer. I’d prefer those lines to be more accurate than they are currently.
Comment from Mappo on 4 January 2013 at 16:51
I found a lot of the comments that started “OSM is …” very annoying.
They generally took the form “OSM is amateurs, on-the-ground, collecting manually, non-imported, physical observable data” but even avoiding the import debate that seemed an incredibly narrow view.
Isn’t “OSM” also the map renderers, the tile servers, the javascript libraries, the various editors, the communities, the wikis, the concept of being “open”, the HOT teams, the various apps that use the maps etc. etc.
And going back to the import debate, if someone did collect all the 3rd party data into it’s own layered DB to make it easy to incorporate into map output, wouldn’t that also be “OSM”? Why would you not want it to be?