[Talk-GB] Post Boxes no longer present

[Robert Whittaker (OSM lists)]

On 14 September 2015 at 16:02, SK53 <sk53.osm at gmail.com> wrote:
> I surveyed a fair bit of the town centre of Stockport on Saturday morning &
> have just been checking against Post Hoc to see if I missed any possible
> postboxes so that I could recheck my photos.
>
> In doing so I came across a couple of post boxes outside Carphone
> Warehouse/Halifax in Merseyway Shopping Centre which no longer exist (SK1
> 408  & SK1 409). They are visible in this Geograph image taken in April
> 2014. The area has obviously been re-modelled since then: including a big
> hole cut out so one can see the Mersey. Bollards & other street furniture
> have changed, and in the approximate location of the post boxes there is now
> a K6 telephone kiosk (the one visible in the geograph photo having gone).
>
> I have no plans to add disappeared post boxes to OSM, so wanted to know is
> there any other way to flag up that these have gone, so as to simplify
> hunting down ones which are truly missing?

Yes, there is a way for my tools to be told that a box on Royal Mail's
list is no longer in existence / use. They then come out as grey
markers on the district maps (e.g.
http://robert.mathmos.net/osm/postboxes/progress/IP/IP24/ ) and should
be omitted from any reports of missing boxes.

However, there's no public interface to allow people to add the
"missing" flag themselves, but if you send me the details, I can do it
manually. If there's lots of demand (i.e. I get too many requests to
deal with manually) then I'll have a look at setting up an interface
that people can use to mark the boxes themselves. The best way to
contact me for this, is via my OSM use profile:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Robert%20Whittaker

Since the Royal Mail locations are not always correct, I'd like to
those requesting boxes to be marked to have evidence (such as what you
posted above) that the box definitely used to be present, so we can be
sure that it's not always been in alternative location. Also, with
boxes like the ones described above, is there a chance that the box
has been moved elsewhere, and the box number lives on at a new
location?

Best wishes,

Robert.

-- 
Robert Whittaker