[Talk-ca] Community Mailboxes and Relay Boxes Tagging

[Jarek Piórkowski]

On Sun, Oct 16, 2022, at 15:35, wolfy1339 via Talk-ca wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> It has come up in the OSM Discord that the current tagging for the 
> community mailboxes and the relay boxes are outdated.

This is a rather strong opening considering that as far as I know the tags haven't been declared outdated by any vote or consensus. Please include references to their outdatedness, or consider less prescriptive wording.

> The `amenity=relay_box` tag is discouraged and instead the tags 
> `man_made=street_cabinet` + `street_cabinet=postal_service` be used.
> The `amenity=relay_box` is only tagged 308 times worldwide, of which 
> most are tagged in Canda, compared to 2 309 worldwide.
> Therefore I propose to update the tagging guidelines to reflect the 
> worldwide established tag.

(Note to other people on mailing list: the 2309 worldwide refers to number of uses of street_cabinet=postal_service)

Who is amenity=relay_box discouraged by?

I would dispute that street_cabinet=postal_service is used worldwide, because it appears to be largely used in Europe and in one neighbourhood in Montreal. Personally I'm not really a fan of replacing a common name "relay box" with the descriptive "a box on the street that is used by the post" - it's a little bit like replacing amenity=restaurant with amenity=food_service + food_service=table_service. But on the whole I could live with the change.

As far as I know, a substantial amount of amenity=relay_box were added by https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/andrewpmk. I don't believe they are active on this mailing list at the moment so you probably want to send them a message on openstreetmap.org to get their input. Please post back here if you hear back so we have a record.

> The community mailboxes are currently tagged as `amenity=post_box`, 
> which according to the wiki and users of the OSM Discord, is for 
> outbound mail only.
> Another reason given is that applications will not understand. It has 
> also been disputed by a decade old question on the OSM Help forums [1]
> Since community mailboxes handle incoming mail as the prominent 
> function, the more appropriate tag would be `amenity=letter_box`. 
> However, there currently isn't an equivalent tag for 
> `post_box:type=community`.
> It has been recommended to tag these as `amenity=letter_box` + 
> `post_box=yes`
> 
> What are your thoughts on this?

I see the argument that amenity=post_box could be seen as almost a trolltag for a CMB since its most prominent function is receiving mail, not sending mail.

Some thoughts and questions:
- What tag would you use to indicate that the letter is a community letter box, rather than a mailbox for one house/address?
- post_box:type=community has almost 4000 uses, while amenity=letter_box has about 12700 uses. This means that with the suggested change, Canadian community mailboxes would become a quarter of all worldwide uses of amenity=letter_box. At this scale, you might want to consult users of amenity=letter_box as well - do they feel that a CMB is also a "letter box"?
- It might also be good to consider how tagging of community mailboxes intersects with the functionally similar amenity=parcel_locker.

Thanks,
--Jarek
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