[Tagging] What's a power=station?

[Steve Bennett]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 6:41 AM, Mike N. <niceman at att.net> wrote:
>
>> Instead: "Would it be more effective to store POI's in an open
>> directory (i.e. indexed by address), rather than in the OSM database
>> (i.e. indexed by lat/long)?"
>>
>> I think it's an interesting question.
>
>    I'm not convinced.  The original argument was that it is easier to
> update when the business moves - you just change the address.   I'd argue
> the opposite; when a new business opens in place of the previous business,
> you only need to update the business name / type.

I have a feeling the suggestion that Anthony was referring to was one
I made. It came up in the context of mapping architects, lawyers and
other professional bodies. There comes a point where they're not
really POIs or "amenities" any more, but simply a business directory.
Which I think would be handled much better by having an actual
directory, and georeferencing back to OSM in order to render a map, or
load data onto a GPS or whatever.

I'm not advocating using the directory instead of amenity=cafe or
amenity=fuel or whatever. But in the long term, the ideal solution
would probably be to allow that directory type information to be
maintained separately, in a more convenient form than a 2D map.
Particularly since while addresses are relatively fixed, their
contents changes. (Around here, it seems that every time I walk down
the main street, there are cafés I haven't noticed before - some
tenancies last less than six months). And some kind of solution like
that is needed to cope with multi-storey blocks of offices anyway, I
think.

Steve