[Tagging] Fast food vs. restaurant vs. cafe

[Ulf Lamping]

Am 05.05.2010 07:47, schrieb Roy Wallace:
> On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 6:22 PM, John Smith<deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> On 4 May 2010 18:14, Roy Wallace<waldo000000 at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>> 1) allow for the specification of more than one type simultaneously,
>>> e.g. amenity=A;B, amenity=B;C, etc., or
>>> 2) change/specify in more detail the definitions of A, B and C so that
>>> they *are*  mutually exclusive, or
>>> 3) be forced to tag things incorrectly
>>>
>>> Which option shall it be? I vote 2, which includes the option of just
>>> using amenity=D (where D=A OR B OR C)
>>
>> Do you have any concrete examples?
>
> So, I've been asked for a concrete example, presumably referring to
> how to define fast_food/restaurant/cafe *mutually exclusively*. I
> looked at the current wiki definitions for all three tags, and these
> are the best, new *mutually exclusive* definitions I could come up
> with, in the form of a flowchart:
> http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/1179/amenity.gif
>
> If you have suggestions to improve the flowchart, that's great - the
> main point is that, I believe, it is possible to precisely define the
> definitions of cafe/amenity/restaurant. And, I would suggest a unified
> flowchart in this case makes life easier than comparing three
> separate, vague wiki pages, or by doing "mental experiments".

You are asking for black and white definitions/decisions where there's 
lot's of room for grey.

What about a place that serves limited breakfast in the morning, would 
classify as a cafe throughout the day, serves full meals only at noon 
and becomes a bar selling cocktails at night?

What you can do is try to find good descriptions so that most people 
understand what is meant and decide locally how to tag it best. 
Regardless how fine grained you are doing this, there will always be 
corner cases where two people will disagree with each other.

What you just can't do is find a precise definition that is valid 
throughout the world and will be doubtless in all possible situations.


BTW: The flowchart is using highly subjective language 
"heavily-advertised pseudo-food" which is *very* certainly not a good 
way to find a concensus. Why does it try to offence junk food fans? Oh, 
and the definition of "pseudo food" will very certainly differ between 
people from the western world and people in africa starving right now.

Regards, ULFL