[Tagging] Postal verses locational addresses

[Warin]

On 12/9/23 03:57, Greg Troxel wrote:
> The fundamental issue is that there are postal addresses and what might
> be called "civil addresses" or "physical addresses" ('locational' I
> understand but is not normal English usage).
I could not think of a better descriptive 'word' for what I wanted to 
express.
>   In the US, we also have
> "911 dispatchable location" which is all about getting there physically
> and is US-bureaucatic-speak.
>
> OSM has decided to tag postal addresses on address points.   I find this
> an odd choice, and I think it really doesn't mean this, as companies
> that use PO boxes are not tagged that way, but with the street address.
>
> The only fix I think of is to have a separate set of tags paddr: and a
> rule that those should be set if they are different from the addr: tags
> (which are postal).  except postcode, which is a postal-only.


Err the zip/postcode in the UK is a (small) physical area. It is used by 
truck delivery drivers to enter into their GPS to find a route to the 
delivery point. See 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcodes_in_the_United_Kingdom

Possibly the OSM addr thinking is based on the UK where the postal 
address is the physical location?There maybe exceptions to this in the 
UK too?


> All in all I think it was a mistake to tag postal addresses.  Maybe we
> can just redefine addr:foo to be the physical address, except
> addr:postcode is the code assigned by the government/monopoly delivery
> service.  And then add some mailing address tag for things that need
> them.


I do think OSM is more of a location data base. Imaging a personal visit 
to these places with addresses quite some distance (miles) away .. 
nasty. And some of them have more than two locations...