Add way to show disputed territories on geo maps

[leigh-plt]

Why plotly use russian maps, not internationally recognized maps?

[nicolaskruchten]

Can you elaborate on your question? I'm not sure I understand...

[leigh-plt]

https://github.com/plotly/plotly.js/blob/master/dist/topojson/europe_50m.json
All map europe/world. It's russian map of europe (Ukraine, George)

[nicolaskruchten]

Ah I see. We bundle data from https://www.naturalearthdata.com/ and they have a mechanism for managing de-facto/disputed areas. We don't independently make any calls on that.

[leigh-plt]

Your map by 2015 hadn't been russians version (look on history). Your current map don't mark territory as disputed areas.

[nicolaskruchten]

Today we bundle v4.1.0 of the countries data from https://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/10m-cultural-vectors/10m-admin-0-countries/ and so we basically inherit their "Disclaimer".

You're right that we don't currently have a way for choropleth maps to mark territory as disputed. In the future, we will add the ability for users to supply their own GeoJSON data to our choropleth traces, but I don't have any timeline for this.

I'll move this issue to the Plotly.js repo, which is the better place to have this conversation.

[alexcjohnson]

For reference, this came in with #3874 - during which we noticed this change and I commented:

The only changes I notice are Crimea transferring to Russia (accurate, whatever one thinks of its propriety) and ...

As @nicolaskruchten mentioned we don't make any independent judgments here (feel free to take that up with naturalearthdata), but we would certainly be open to some sort of mechanism for special marking of disputed territories. I'd wait for @etpinard to comment before embarking on a contribution, but presumably this would start with a PR to https://github.com/etpinard/sane-topojson

[nicolaskruchten]

Geo maps now accept a geojson attribute, so users can specify their own world map.

[OrchidSoleil]

So now, after Russia has started the full-scale unprovoked war against Ukraine, is it not obvious to you that Crimea is not a disputed territory, but territory of Ukraine that was occupied by Russia 2014? Why is Crimea still marked as Russia in the default version of the map?

[alexcjohnson]

@OrchidSoleil This issue is closed, but see our full answer to this question of how to handle Putin's war crimes: plotly/plotly.py#3719 (comment)

Feel free to add to the discussion over there.

[Axios0ne]

@alexcjohnson No, this issue cannot simply be closed, because the territories that you mark on your maps as the territories of the occupying countries are not their territories.

You could add some additional inscription something like (Crimea is an internationally recognized territory of Ukraine occupied by Russia).

If you discussed the disputed territories for a long time and decided that you will show them as those that are actually controlled by the occupying state. Why don't you mark it on the map so people understand it. Not all map users will read your GitHub explanation.

Also, this applies not only to the occupied territories of Ukraine, other countries have the same situation. For example, Indian territories occupied by China.

[alexcjohnson]

@Axios0ne this issue is closed not because we view it as complete (although that was originally why it was closed) but so that we collect all relevant discussions in one place. As I said before, please continue the discussion at plotly/plotly.py#3719, particularly if you'd like to contribute to improving the situation 😄