Can we add tagging recommendations for retail chains to the wiki?

General talk
1

I find that even after using OSM for a while, I still have to decide every time whether Starbucks is a

amenity=restaurant; cuisine=coffe shop, or
amenity=cafe; cuisine=coffe_shop, or
amenity=coffee_house, or
something else

Judging by the XAPI/JOSM data for name=Starbucks, others are making decisions, too, and coming up with pretty wide variety of answers.

The same goes for Costco (membership warehouse) and many other retail and food chains I am tagging.

It would be nice to be able to just go to the wiki, do a search for “Starbucks” or “Costco” and know what the “right” tags for them are.

I see two ways of getting there, one or both can be implemented.

  1. For each tag, have a section in the template to list chains that fit that tag.

So for Tag:cuisine=coffee shop (not that it’s written very clearly) there would be a section

Chains this tag applies to

Starbucks
Seattle’s Best
Tim Hortons
…

This list would aim to be exhaustive and open to discussion. If a user does not find their regional or national chain on the list (or anywhere else in the wiki), but determines that the chain should be so tagged, they would be encouraged to add the name to the list.

  1. Have a separate page to list ALL multinational, national and regional chains, sorted either by region, type of business or alphabetically, specifying the applicable tags. For example

Chain name Regions Tags Comments

Costco North America, UK, shop=membership
Australia, etc.
Starbucks Multinational amenity=cafe; cuisine=coffe_shop
Tim Hortons Canada, select US amenity=restaurant; cuisine=coffee_shop
states

The Regions column is pretty much optional.

2

Hi ponzu, welcome to this forum :slight_smile:

Well indeed I thought about this problem a few times ago. You are right, retail brands/chains are a good hint for mappers to get in touch with tagging schemes.

I guess this will be to much for the normal templates. Mostly every country has it’s own brands. I guess the time will come where we also check the completeness. So a template similar to http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/List_of_OSM_based_Services would be ok?

To me it sounds better to put the brands on the corresponding key pages? Or a central page? I guess we can’t link to the logos cause they are trademarks :confused:

3

Yes, something like that template would work. If all all brands are on the same page, then it just needs to be a sortable wiki table. Or do you think it would have sections for countries or types of places?

Can we mock up a page and see what it looks like with a few entries?

I don’t mind putting brands on the corresponding key pages, either. Are you saying we would not modify the template, but instead just add a section manually to those keys that have brands associated with them? I don’t mind trying it both ways. The question would be: should both ways be carried on going forward or the best one picked?

4

Well the pro of a template is that you can alter the presentation at any time, withhout touching the datas. I’m thinking about if we could create a template, that might be usefull for http://taginfo.openstreetmap.de , too

Yes, I’m talking about a new template, very similar to this tables at the llist page. IMHO such a list would be to much for the normal key template. No not both, as said I’m thinking about and we should wait what others wiki editors would say.