[Talk-ca] Community Mailboxes and Relay Boxes Tagging

[wolfy1339]

 > - What tag would you use to indicate that the letter is a community 
letter box, rather than a mailbox for one house/address?
There is the `post:housenumber=*` tag in which you can place all the 
different house numbers serviced by a community mailbox.
However, one CMB could service multiple streets in rural areas. There 
currently doesn't seem to be a proper tag to denote a CMB equivalent to 
`post_box:type=community`

 > - 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"?

The wiki entry for `amenity=letter_box` shows a picture of the 
equivalent of a CMB down in the states.

I will reach out on the tagging mailing list to ask for more feedback 
from the international community

 > - It might also be good to consider how tagging of community 
mailboxes intersects with the functionally similar amenity=parcel_locker.

The wiki definition currently defines the tag for automated machines 
where you can pick up/or send parcels.


On 19/10/2022 21:29, Jarek Piórkowski wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022, at 23:35, Jarek Piórkowski wrote:
>>> 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.
>
> One more thought about the suggestion to change tagging of community 
> mailboxes:
>
> An outcome where some CMBs have been retagged to amenity=letter_box 
> but a substantial amount remain as amenity=post_box seems to me to be 
> worse than the current situation where most CMBs are on post_box 
> (because any data users looking for CMBs would have to check for both 
> tags). Thus, it seems that we should make sure that if a change is 
> adopted, it is adopted fairly widely relatively fast. As we don't 
> really have a large and connected editor community in Canada that 
> could mobilize to change tagging of their local CMBs in a few days or 
> even weeks, a centralized effort that basically boils down to what 
> would be considered automated edits would be necessary. Thus, make 
> sure that you are prepared to follow the Automated Edits code of conduct.
>
> Cheers,
> Jarek
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-ca mailing list
> Talk-ca at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/attachments/20221021/ed307dcb/attachment.htm>