[Tagging] shop=confectionery / pastry / candy / sweets

[Michał Brzozowski]

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 8:49 PM, Murry McEntire
<murry.mcentire at gmail.com> wrote:

> This terminology problem is the main reason I stopped recommending OSM to
> non-technical relatives and friends. I knew they would use current U.S.
> assumptions on what the terminology of the map meant and would be misled. I
> knew they would not use a map that, in their eyes, was inaccurate and
> sometimes flat out wrong. They are much better off using Google maps or Bing
> to find shops and services. This is also one of a few reasons why I largely
> stopped contributing to OSM: why pursue a "scholarly" effort that is of
> little use to the people I would most like to share my efforts with.
>
> Murry

This was the same issue that I was encountering with fast food vs
restaurant distinction. A fast food for a typical person is either
McDonald's/KFC or one of many kebab venues. On the other hand, I was
told that amenity=fast_food is when you pay before consumption. This
is quite wrong to me (are you going to include an asterisk quoting
that definition when someone searches from an app?), as there is
smooth distinction and I'd rather "promote" intermediate cases such as
casual dining style restaurants.

My bottom line is:

1) Don't reinvent the wheel. See how "competitors" have tackled a
problem (Gonna elaborate very widely on that when I'll have enough
examples and time to write).

2) Tag to users' expectations, not to your definitions. But the
consequence would be a substantial reduction in the mailing list
traffic :-P

3) Ontology should be simple and rather general. Being too particular
while incomplete is a plague of current shop and services tagging
system.

Michał