[Tagging] internment camps, prisons, refugee sites etc.

[stevea]

On Nov 1, 2021, at 5:23 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com> wrote:
> As many people have advocated amenity=prison, shall we change the definition to allow for tagging of internment camps with the tag?

No.  Let’s not change an existing definition, as that is an entire “can of worms” (messy potential or actual disaster of likely unresolvable details).

First, let me thank the list for continuing good dialog.

I do agree that amenity=prison is fine, as it a prison IS an “amenity” in that it is a society-built institution for housing properly-convicted felons / offenders.  It’s a big, fenced set of buildings on a medium-sized chunk of land that serves a particular purpose that society has agreed to fund, build and support.  Let’s leave alone whether that’s a good way to “solve crime.”

The question asked had to do with “internment camps” and “refugee sites.”  Both of these are different from prisons and neither of them can in any sense be considered an “amenity” (in the same way a library, school or even prison is).

Internment camps come in a lot of different flavors, and have over the centuries.  We quite practically need a small booklet on their history if we even hope to tag these somewhere even close to “correctly.”

Refugee sites are altogether different yet again.  Often even larger than prisons (in land area), and sometimes “housing” up to hundreds of thousands of people (thousands or tens of thousands is more typical) these are something which could almost be considered a kind of town or city in and of themselves, with “barbers” and “shops” (quite informal) and even music lessons and book lending going on.  OSM can be proud of the mapping efforts that have taken place in the Nairobi “slum” (apologies if that is an offensive word to some, it is not meant to be) of Kibera.  While Kibera is a “neighborhood” (a very, very large one by OSM standards), it shares aspects with and is also different from refugee sites, not actually being a refugee site.

As we can go “too far down the rabbit hole” in discussions like this, but at the same time, I’m urging a truly comprehensive design of the vast kinds of things that could be found in a “human_made” (=refugee_site, =internment_camp…) place like this, rather than a haphazard approach of a few, quick stabs at this in this tag discussion list.  It deserves a truly deep dive and thoughtful contemplation of how this complex topic, with possibly a rich and branching syntax, should be developed in OSM.