[Tagging] Delete vs Removed LSP?

[Jeroen Hoek]

> I'm thinking about amenities like Telephone boxes and Postal boxes. 
> If they have been removed you can either delete them from OSM or tag
> then with the removed life cycle prefix. The advantage of the second
> is that it might prevent someone re-adding the feature using old 
> imagery or survey information.
The lifecycle-prefixes are intended for features where something remains
visible. So a telephone box turned into an amenity=public_bookcase would
benefit from disused:amenity=telephone.

Generally, if a feature is really gone, just deleting it seems to be
preferred, but sometimes depending on the circumstances a grace period 
is useful. Personally, I've only done this with disused bus stops where 
the trimmings (like the kerb and the pole) remain for a while after the 
buses stop calling there.

> Is this the preferred approach or is there some problem with this 
> approach?

At some point features that are gone should be removed from the map as 
well just to keep things maintainable. Otherwise you'd get streets 
filled with removed:amenity=bench etc.