Have lots of postboxen to upload

Over the past two years, I’ve been walking the streets examining and logging postboxen (mainly because I’m a sad persun).

I’m manually uploading them, rather than doing a mass-upload, which would splat other peoples’ efforts.

Some people have commented that my tags are a bit unusual. Can anyone point me in the direction of where to look, please.

I’ve found a wiki page, but that was dated around 2008, and was just people talking about what to propose; I’m not sure how to find out what “current” practice is.

Specifically, I would like to know how to represent “last collection times”, i.e. the specific syntax.

There was talk about using “opening_times” as a tag. That appears to have been abandoned because it would’ve given the wrong impression that you could only post at certain times.
However, meter_mail boxen in the UK are only open certain times. How would I include this data.

Also, the default for mail_type appears to be “stamped only”. This is not how UK postboxes work: with “normal” boxen, you can put both stamped AND meter mail in the same box. Having such a default, where you have to override it most of the time is not helpful.

Richard [in SG2]

Already had a look at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Howto_Map_A → Post box?

See http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dpost_box
It should have all of the tags for postbox that are agreed on, and in common use. Anything on the discussion page is probably just discussion, and not necessarily in use anywhere.

For collection times, use the tag collection_times= http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:collection_times
See the examples section and the images for details of the syntax.
For the UK, it would probably be something like

collection_times=Mo-Fr 17:30; Sa 12:00

Yes, I think it makes sense to use the opening_hours tag as well, for boxes where its only possible to post at certain times, eg meter mail boxes (or boxes inside shops etc?).

I don’t think there’s any agreed or commonly used tag for mail type, though it would be a good idea. And it makes sense for it to default to “any mail” if not specified, at least for the UK.

I have created a proposal for some additional tags for post boxes, with tags for the post box type, mail type, mail class and royal cypher.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Extend_post_box

This is currently just a draft, comments and suggestions for additional tags or values welcome. Are there any more different types of postboxes or types of mail etc. And it could do with some more example photos.