[Talk-ca] Community Mailboxes and Relay Boxes Tagging

[Jarek Piórkowski]

On Sun, Oct 16, 2022, at 17:58, john whelan wrote:
> I think the community mailboxes used to be tagged CMB but the recommended in the wiki has changed.  Either of the  existing tag seems to cover the possibilities.

As far as I know, CMB started out as amenity=post_box + type=cmb as an easy and quick tag that Canadian editors would understand. I think acronyms and abbreviations were more accepted in OSM at the time. At some point the suggestion to use post_box:type=community was added to the tagging guidelines wiki. I would that it was spelled out in an effort to make the tag easier to understand for people who haven't see the CMB acronym before. Then many type=cmb were changed in 2021 in connection with discussion in https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/2021-September/010097.html

> I'm not sure why you want to change either one.  Changing what exists affects many things.  Custom renders for example with things such as maperitive.

Well, benefit of having a worldwide standard is I would think pretty clear - _if_ the things being standardized truly are alike. The question is whether the benefit outweighs the costs of changing established local norms.

For relay boxes, where it's 300 nodes and a handful of editors who created them, and a somewhat obscure subject, I can believe that costs are relatively small because few people would have to adjust.

> My personal view is the Canadian wiki guidelines don't always reflect reality neither does it give the authority for the guidelines.  

I'd say they have about as much authority as other OSM guidelines. They're generally good ideas and there's value in keeping to a standard (regional, national, or worldwide). But there'll always be exceptions. And sometimes one needs to check wiki page history to see if it's just one wiki warrior trying to change standards.

--Jarek
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