[OSM-newbies] Church, or not?

[Richard Weait]

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 5:24 PM, Isaac Wingfield <isw at witzend.com> wrote:
> It's becoming clear to me that some of the entries on my local part of
> OSM are based on old, out of date information, and I've been fixing
> these as I become aware of them. Some of the entries are easy -- a
> "Golf Club" marker on what is now clearly an industrial site -- but
> one I'm unsure about is when a location has a "place_of_worship"
> designation, but on-site inspection reveals that there is no obvious
> church there, or even a sign designating one.
>
> I've tried web searching on the names (wondering if the icons somehow
> got displaced), but that's been very frustrating. It would appear that
> a lot of "information sites", such as lists of churches offered by
> religious organizations, take their data from the same obsolete
> information sources that OSM used; they all point precisely to the
> place where the OSM "church" icon is, where there is nothing
> resembling a church (I even found the same thing regarding the "golf
> club" I mentioned above, on a site offering information to traveling
> golfers).
>
> So here's the question: It's easy enough to tell a golf club from an
> industrial site just by walking past it, but a "place_of_worship" is
> perhaps not so clear; could one by located in a private home, with no
> external markers? If I find nothing but a house at a location where
> OSM has a place_of_worship icon, can I just delete it?

I've recently seen some non-traditional places of worship; regular
meetings in hotel conference rooms and what would otherwise be retail
shops.

I'd fall back to the OSM "observable / verifiable" guidelines.  If you
can't point to the sign that proves it on the ground, perhaps it
doesn't belong in OSM.

Have you contacted the user that added the items to get their perspective?