Right way to tag a shop?

General talk
1

Without realising I’ve used two different ways to tag a shop. Which is right?

Whole building tagged as a shop:

building=yes
name=Russo's Auto Center
note=(sic) Center has US spelling
shop=car_parts

POI located within a building that is mapped separately:

addr:city=Peterborough
addr:housenumber=41
addr:postcode=PE2 9PB
addr:street=Oundle Road
name=Oak County Poperty Sales
office=estate_agent
phone=+441733 707 207

plus

building=yes

Is there a right way of doing this or are both valid? And if both valid are there any reasons to choose one over the other?

Thanks,

Edward / eteb3

2

This is one of those questions where preferences vary between mappers. There are some situations (more than one shop in a building, building and shop have different values for the same key such as name, …) where one of the options simply doesn’t work, but apart from these, you’ll find plenty examples of both approaches. So it’s a good idea to be tolerant of stylistic differences when working together with other mappers. :slight_smile:

To make things worse(?), there’s even a third option: Mapping the shop as a second polygon, usually using the same nodes as the building. This combines some benefits of the first two options: It properly expresses the size and shape of the shop, but still keeps the tags of the shop and the building cleanly separated. It’s also the most work, though, and is therefore comparatively rare.

I’ve written a longer answer about this topic in the help Q&A forum, too.

3

Super, thank you.