<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">On Mon, 11 May 2020 at 10:58, s8evq <<a href="mailto:s8evqq@runbox.com">s8evqq@runbox.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Hi Paul,<br>
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On Mon, 11 May 2020 02:10:12 +0100, Paul Allen <<a href="mailto:pla16021@gmail.com" target="_blank">pla16021@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> I find the whole contact: namespace to be ill-conceived. But fine, if<br>
> you want it then use it. Just please stop suggesting that we<br>
> deprecate website=* and phone=*.<br>
<br>
What's you counter argument to the people suggesting that contact:* makes it easier for data consumers to gather all contact info in one go, instead of hard coding all the possible keys. What if next year a new way of contacting comes up?<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Since you ask...</div><div><br></div><div>What purpose does that actually serve?<br></div><div><br></div><div>For mappers, no purpose. They use the editor preset and get phone=* or</div><div> contact:phone=* depending upon what the author of the editor thinks is the right</div><div> way to do it. No purpose for mappers who enter raw tags either - it's easy</div><div>enough to create a wiki page for "Contact Tags" and list phone, website,</div><div>fax, telepathy, etc. Maybe, just maybe, for newbies who aren't sure of</div><div>what contact tags are available and want to be able to type "contact"</div><div>into the editor and get a list of possibilities, but some editors do</div><div>searches of brief tag descriptions that would achieve the same thing. But</div><div>I'd argue most mappers operate on "I have a phone number for this POI,</div><div>how do I tag it?" rather than "What contact methods are available for</div><div>POIs, when I know that I'll check if this POI has any of them."<br></div><div><br></div><div>For users, little purpose. They use the query tool in standard carto (or similar</div><div>tool in other cartos) and get a list of tags. If a POI had dozens of tags then</div><div>grouping the contact tags in one place might be slightly helpful, but in most</div><div>cases not.<br></div><div><br></div><div>For carto, no purpose. They ignore tags unless somebody has specifically</div><div>put in handling code for them. They don't (and probably won't) render POIs</div><div>with some form of contact tag any differently, so it doesn't matter if they</div><div>don't code for phone=* or don't code for contact:phone=* because not</div><div>coding to handle a tag requires no effort.</div><div><br></div><div>For data queries, maybe a purpose. But first you have to convince me that</div><div>anybody would have reason to perform such a query. Bring up overpass-turbo,</div><div>move the map to a particular area, and find all the POIs which have any method</div><div>of contacting them. Why would anybody want to do this? And if you can</div><div>come up with a reason, how often is this likely to happen? Often enough</div><div>that it's worth all the hassle of contact:*=* so that somebody can build a</div><div>query on "contact:*=*" rather than "phone=* and website=* and fax=*</div><div>and whatever=*"?</div><div><br></div>The only purpose I've seen anybody mention for contact:phone is</div><div class="gmail_quote">for a phone number to contact a car park's operator. And even that</div><div class="gmail_quote">doesn't really seem justified. It's a phone number for a POI. The</div><div class="gmail_quote">phone isn't physically at the POI but it's the number you dial to talk</div><div class="gmail_quote">to the operator of the POI. I don't see any reason to make a</div><div class="gmail_quote">distinction.<br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote">I've yet to see anybody explain what a phone number is for other than to</div><div class="gmail_quote">contact somebody. There are fax numbers, but they would be better</div><div class="gmail_quote">handled by fax=*. As Gertrude Stein didn't say, a phone number is</div><div class="gmail_quote">a phone number is a phone number.<br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div>The contact: namespace seems to be taxonomic hierarchy for taxonomic</div><div>hierarchy's sake.</div><div><br></div><div>-- <br></div><div>Paul</div><div><br></div></div></div>