[Talk-ca] Community mailboxes

Fri Sep 10 23:39:33 UTC 2021

Currently rendering systems such as osmand will use either a French value
or an English value based on preferences.  In Ottawa Sparks Street comes up
in English and rue Sparks in French.  The west end of Ottawa has a higher
percentage of English speakers and in general there are more French
speakers in the East. I think 99% of Francophones in Ottawa can speak
English.  There are towns is Quebec that have a majority of English
speakers.  One Quebec demographic language problem is that it is thought
that French will no longer be the language used in the home by more than
50% of the population in X years time. Do we change all the French to
English when that happens?  I don't like the idea of using a name based on
what is thought to be the local language.  For example what would be your
definition of a local area?

Bilingualism is a minefield.

Cheerio John

On Fri, 10 Sept 2021 at 18:13, Andrew Lester <a-lester at shaw.ca> wrote:

> I agree that we should probably keep the operator tag. I think it would be
> good to come up with a solution that we can add to the Canadian Tagging
> Guidelines page so future mappers can keep things consistent. Otherwise,
> we'll likely end up with a mix of operator values across the country, and
> possibly get some dual-values again. I like the idea of setting operator
> based on the predominant language of the area. Do you think that would be
> sufficient guidance? I'm thinking something along the lines of "Set the
> operator tag to either "Canada Post" or "Postes Canada" based on the
> predominant language of the area"?
>
> At least for now, the mailboxes in question would be fairly easy to split
> between English-speaking and French-speaking areas. The ones in Quebec
> would get operator=Postes Canada, whereas most of the rest would get
> operator=Canada Post. There are only two in New Brunswick: one just west of
> Fredericton (http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/6691229693) and one
> outside of Saint John (http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4117220884). I
> admit I'm not too familiar with the intricacies of bilingualism in New
> Brunswick. Would these two areas be considered English-speaking? The roads
> that these mailboxes are on have English names. Or is New Brunswick truly
> bilingual and we realistically can't choose one or the other? I know some
> places like Brussels use dual-value names, so maybe we'd just have to use
> operator=Canada Post/Postes Canada in New Brunswick?
>
> Andrew
>
> ------------------------------
> *From: *"Jherome Miguel" <jheromemiguel at gmail.com>
> *To: *"talk-ca" <talk-ca at openstreetmap.org>
> *Sent: *Friday, September 10, 2021 12:25:02 PM
> *Subject: *Re: [Talk-ca] Community mailboxes
>
> I would either stick to option 2 or 3, but leaning to option 2. We can
> assume all community mailboxes are under Canada Post/Postes Canada even if
> FedEx, Purolator or UPS doesn’t have something like that, but I would still
> like to keep the operator tag for completeness.
>
> On Fri, Sep 10, 2021 at 5:02 AM <talk-ca-request at openstreetmap.org> wrote:
>
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>> Today's Topics:
>>
>>    1. Community mailboxes (Andrew Lester)
>>    2. Re: Community mailboxes (Jarek Pi?rkowski)
>>    3. Re: Community mailboxes (Jarek Pi?rkowski)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2021 15:52:33 -0600 (MDT)
>> From: Andrew Lester <a-lester at shaw.ca>
>> To: talk-ca <talk-ca at openstreetmap.org>
>> Subject: [Talk-ca] Community mailboxes
>> Message-ID:
>>         <686760212.400042543.1631224353185.JavaMail.zimbra at shaw.ca>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Back in March, Dartmouthmapmaker made a mechanical edit (
>> https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/100559754) where they changed
>> all community mailboxes in Canada tagged with type=cmb and:
>> -Gave them the name "Canada Post Community Mailbox"
>> -Added the operator tag with the value "Canada Post/ Poste Canada"
>> -Changed type=cmb to post_box:type=community
>>
>> I made a comment on that changeset at the time expressing my disapproval
>> of the changes, but didn't pursue it any further. However, I think it's
>> time we deal with the situation.
>>
>> Here are the problems I see with the change and how I propose that they
>> be resolved:
>> -Name: These mailboxes don't have names in reality. If any particular
>> mailbox does indeed have a name (which I find unlikely), I highly doubt
>> it's "Canada Post Community Mailbox". This artificial label should be
>> removed from any mailboxes.
>> -Operator: The operator value currently contains both of the bilingual
>> versions of "Canada Post". I believe this should be split out into
>> operator:en=Canada Post and operator:fr=Poste Canada
>> -Type: While type=cmb was the documented recommendation for these for
>> many years, I see that the Canadian tagging guidelines (
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Canadian_tagging_guidelines#Community_mailboxes)
>> have since been updated to instead recommend post_box:type=community.
>> Considering this change to the guidelines, I would support retaining this
>> part of the original changeset.
>>
>> In summary, what I'm proposing is a mechanical edit where:
>> -An Overpass search is performed for "amenity=post_box and name="Canada
>> Post Community Mailbox" in Canada"
>> -The name tag is removed
>> -The operator tag is removed (or should this contain "Canada Post"?)
>> -The tag operator:en is set to "Canada Post"
>> -The tag operator:fr is set to "Poste Canada"
>> -The tag post_box:type is retained, or set to post_box:type=community if
>> not present
>>
>> The original changeset modified 8487 nodes, but an Overpass search now
>> finds only 871 that still have that name, so it seems like many
>> contributors have the same opinion as me and have already made some changes
>> in their areas.
>>
>> What are your thoughts on the proposed actions? If there isn't any
>> opposition in the next couple of weeks, I plan to go ahead and make these
>> changes.
>>
>> Andrew Lester
>> Victoria, BC
>>
>>
>>
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