[Tagging] service=drive-through or drive_through?

[Nathan Edgars II]

On 6/29/2011 12:40 AM, David Murn wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-06-28 at 20:51 -0500, John F. Eldredge wrote:
>
>> I would not be surprised if there are also some occurrences of
>>   "drive-thru" or "drive_thru".  American business people seem to prefer
>>   to write "thru" rather than "through", so much so that some members of
>>   the public probably aren't aware of the proper spelling.
>
> Well, technically if were mapping whats on the ground, a lot of
> restaurant signs say "Drive thru".  The wiki has a redirect from
> drive_thru to drive_through, with 4 occurances of 'drive thru' on the
> page, but no explanation about why the tag uses the British English
> phrase instead of the words which are actually on the sign.
>
> Maybe this should be clarified on the wiki, not just which spelling is
> preferred, but why and where its appropriate to translate from whats
> signed.  There was a discussion on talk@ a while back about this.  A
> similar discussion was raised about Donut vs Doughnut.  While the latter
> is the more traditional spelling, that doesnt mean that anyone should go
> around changing 'Dunkin Donuts' to 'Dunkin Doughnuts', if its tagged the
> first way.. the same way I believe you shouldnt be changing the 'Drive
> thru' signed areas to 'Drive through'.

There's a big difference between changing the name=* tag and changing 
other tags. If you were giving the drive thru roadway a name, what's on 
the sign would probably be appropriate (though we do expand many 
abbreviations). But tagging it as service=drive_through is like tagging 
footway=sidewalk where the sign says pavement. You're describing what 
the thing is, not what it's called.