[Tagging] Fast food vs. restaurant vs. cafe

[Steve Bennett]

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 7:39 PM, Katie Filbert <filbertk at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm interested in feedback on how to tag particular chain
> restaurants/places.  I have a copy of the OSM planet database and see
> inconsistencies  in how these places are tagged.

Pretty much by definition all these tags will have grey areas. The
best we can hope to do is make a decision on individual cases (eg, a
particular chain) and apply that consistently.

Unfortunately I'm not familiar with any of the chains you cite, other
than Pizza Hut. I would have said fast food, but there's actually very
little to distinguish it (afaik) from any other pizza restaurant, so
you might as well say "restaurant".

Ultimately it probably doesn't matter too much. As a consumer (pun
intended) of OSM, my main interest in knowing whether something was
"restaurant" vs "fast food" would be whether I could quickly get hot
food, cheaply. Questions like disposable cutlery would be fairly
irrelevant. But others will have very different needs.

Also I suggest that in the case of chains, as long as it's named
correctly, people familiar with the chain will draw their own
conclusions.

Steve