[Tagging] Is this a drinking fountain?

[stevea]

On Oct 9, 2022, at 4:15 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 10 Oct 2022, at 00:15, stevea <steveaOSM at softworkers.com> wrote:
>> 
>> If this water is potable, it's amenity=drinking_water. 
> 
> yes, it is potable, and if you look closely you’ll notice that the tube has an upper hole, so when you tap the flow it will create a vertical spout in the curve, so somehow it does have an upward flow.

That's clever, I haven't seen that; seems like it would work well.  I'll have to try it (plugging the downward flow, forcing upward flow, so that I can drink with my lips) next time I encounter one of these (or even this one).

> There is no tap, continuous flow, which is best from a hygienic and temperature aspect but wasting some water of course.

Yes, some "fountains" (for drinking water) are like this.  I suppose somebody figured "well, the drainage is good" (or even improved, as here with a grate to a wastewater system, apparently) and "well, it doesn't make (hydrological) sense for us to 'plug' this with a 'tap' (spigot, faucet, valve...), so we'll simply allow it to remain free-flowing."  OK.

> I have looked at the drinking fountain article in en.wikipedia and from 14 examples, only 4 have an upward flow, so I would not expect this to be a universal requirement, although I can imagine in some areas all drinking fountains might work like this. In Rome they are very rare, have seen only those in the sapienza university, while the hundreds of others in the city almost always provide the hole so you can redirect the flow (but it is not generally the case in other places nearby)

I am learning to be more flexible in "drinking fountains must have upward flow."  In my experience, what I call "drinking fountains" (what some call a "bubbler") DO have upward flow, either nearly always or always.  It seems this is because of a lack of cultural exposer to wider concepts of "fountain" around the world, so I'm happy to have my understanding of the word "fountain" be expanded to include this.  I am not so naïve as to think that because I haven't seen a wider definition of something that my narrow definition is correct; no.

>> Is it a fountain? Long sigh...I suppose so, but "fountain" wouldn't be the first word I think of for this.  I wouldn't call it a "drinking fountain," though (downward flow), though you can fill a water bottle and you could wash your hands.
> 
> I’ve mapped it with fountain=block, for me it is a modern fountain, with a reference to the historic type (type of tube) but mimicking the normal stone blocks around. By shape it is less fountain than the Bolsena example, and the absence of a water tap doesn’t offer this kind of “side tracking”, so I thought it could be interesting mentioning it.

That works for me.  And, it is interesting.  These entire threads are.  Thanks for the good (and sometimes tedious, but worth it) dialog.