Dear all,
bold parts shall make the core information easier to grasp, i.e. are not yelling
When I wanted to map a shop selling number plates for motor vehicles, I found no clearly agreed/voted/official tag value in the wiki and no discussion in the forum. Using taginfo, I discovered different wordings and each in multiple spellings - and consolidated them by choosing the most often used wording matching the “space replaced by underscore” spelling pattern, which was shop=license_plates. This changeset triggered a discussion - hence creating this forum post where discussion features are more powerful than in the changeset.
Do you know an agreed tagging scheme for those shops? If not, we shall decide: Is it a shop or a craft? Often but not always, plates are produced (speaking for craft) in the same place where they are sold alongside with related goods like vehicle spare parts, trophies,… or services like insurance, logistics, doing the administraive registration process,… (speaking for shop or even office).
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**If it’s key craft, is value signmaker appropriate?
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**If it’s key office, I did not find any appropriate value.
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**If it’s key sho, which value is appropriate? **
For 3, I collected some values
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trophy
Pro: trophy shops usually do engravings, signs etc - so the more general concept of a number plate.
Con: Just a fraction of trophy shops do sell number plates. A relevant share of shops selling number plates do not do any other kind of engravings, signs etc., i.e. the value will cause misleading associatons at user’s side. -
car_parts
Pro: A number plate is an accessory for a vehicle.
Con: Just a fraction of car part shops do sell number plates. Many shops selling number plates do not sell any other car_parts (misleading associatons). car_parts is already specialized e.g. into tyres and trailer - so why shall “number plate” not get it’s own specialized shop value? -
number_plate or otherwise worded/spelled, dedicated value which is not yet “official” / agreed upon.
Pro: Such a distinctive tagging allows users to tell apart shops selling number plates from other shops not selling them, i.e. avoids false positives in search results. This is desirable as you can’t go to an abitrary shop offering engravings/signs/spare parts/trophies/*, because in several legislations, number plate dealers need to be authorized and possess dedicated equipment (number plates have detailed requirements as per law).
Relevance: As a relative proportion, I assume these shops are not less frequent than e.g. frame or model shops which have a value on their own. In absolute numbers, I’d expect 1000-2000 number plate shops alone in Germany: 2-10 of them next to each governmental office for car registration and few more e.g. in areas with many car dealers. AFAIK we have mostly one office per “region” (i.e. 1st part of the license plate) with few exceptions, e.g. 2 offices in Berlin. Hence we’ve roughly 300-350 offices for the 316 “regions” (see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Kfz-Kennzeichen_in_Deutschland#Statistik)).
Con: Effort for another “official” value.
In case 3c is agreed on, we must define the wording + spelling. According to discussion in the changeset and to translators + dictionaries like dict.cc, “license plate” and “license tag” are American English while both "licence plate " and “numberplate” / “number plate” are British English, furthermore we’ve “car tag”. Which of those wordings? Which of the spellings (with or without space)? Singular or plural?
I’m looking forward to your suggestions Personally, I favor 2 and 3c but I don’t have a preference between those two.
Greetings from rainy Freiburg, Georg