[Tagging] access=student and entrance=inter-building: comments?

johnw johnw at mac.com
Mon Jun 8 06:52:23 UTC 2015


A month or so ago, new entrance=types came up, and I thought I had a couple new values for entrance. I’ve been thinking about them, and had these two ideas. 

Please comment on both. 


1) 
Access=student - access designated for students of a school/facility, similar to customers of a shop or visitors of a facility. Does not imply age or gender, though it is used at mostly at K-12 facilities. For use with entrance=* or possibly with certain school amenities (Locker rooms, bathrooms, bicycle parking). 

2)
entrance=inter-building - an entrance that is designated for only moving between buildings in a facility, even if physically accessible from outside. Usually on the ends of an outdoor walkway considered “indoors" because of cultural custom rather than physical access restriction (IE: indoor shoes required). Not to be used on normal outdoor pathway entrances.



Rationale:

In Japan, all schools (greater than 99%) have a separate student entrance. It is usually very large (or leads to a large entrance hall), as all people have to change shoes, so there are hundreds of shoe lockers just for the enrolled students. Teachers have a separate shoe locker set, as well as for for visitors. 

There is also a separate Main entrance, and some large schools have separate teachers and visitors entrances. While the visitors and teachers (employees) access is easily represented by existing access tags, “students” is not.  And specifying by age range is not ideal, as a) we don’t have to specify the age of other entrances, and b) it’s a title - like visitor or employee or customer - which is very often the basis of access=*. And access=customers is a very common access type when dealing with different “titles” of people accessing a shop (ie: a private parking lot vs a customer parking lot), so access=students should follow the same theme when applied to entrance=yes. “students” are the “customers” of schools, in some ways, but not in others, so I want a separate tag.

To illustrate the situation, I uploaded a picture of my school to flickr, as it is difficult to find pictures on the web that show the three types of entrances *together* found at all Japanese primary, secondary, and high schools (we’re talking hundreds of thousands of entrances here, not one or two). 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/javbw/18580176942/ <https://www.flickr.com/photos/javbw/18580176942/>

On the far left is the “student” entrance. This is where attending students are required to enter the school. Besides special events, Only students use this entrance. 

Because our school is a bit small, the entrance is not so big, but larger schools have very large entrances / entrance halls.

On the far right, standard entrance=yes/main. Employees, guests, parents, use that entrance day to day. 

Again, because our school is small, they are close together. Other places have different entrances for each grade of student, and teacher / main entrances on opposite sides of the building. 

The middle entrance (with the tile walkway) is an inter-building pathway with an inter-building entrance. Because of the Japanese (Asian?) style of changing shoes when entering schools and many non-retail buildings, there is a very strict divide between “indoors” and “outdoors” - even when there are many many buildings with walkways open to the air or from building to building. This tile walkway is considered “inside”.  While physically accessible, This entrance is not for people to access the school - it is for inter-building access only. After entering the school normally, anyone can use the inter-building entrance, so there is no inherent access=private or similar - especially since access=private means an entrance you can’t use - where as this is one you CAN use - to move only from building to building. 

Now, with only two buildings, tagging /mapping such a walk or entrance at my school is not so important. But large schools, buildings, and historic places (Japanese castles, palaces, temples, etc)  have many covered walkways and entrances to buildings that are physically accessible, but not from “the outside” - You are able to freely move around (access=customer, permissive, or whatever) - but only if you have entered and changed your shoes. 

When tracing imagery of Japanese schools, these walkways and entrances are easily seen/inferred (the walkways between buildings are always covered, whereas normal footpaths are not)  - and often times an "amenity" building will have a inter-building entrance and a separate entrance=main (like a school’s gym, performance hall, or other venue) - where students “inside” and visitors “outside” access the same facility through different entrances for an event. 

So I want some feedback on access=student and entrance=inter-building to refine my thinking.  Perhaps entrance=student is more in line with entrance=main, service, etc. 

Javbw
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