[Talk-GB] Non-intuitive addresses

[Tom Crocker]

On Sat, 12 Feb 2022, 20:38 Colin Smale, <colin.smale at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> On 02/12/2022 8:29 PM Tom Crocker <tomcrockermail at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, 12 Feb 2022, 17:34 Paul Berry, <pmberry2007 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Mark,
>
> I'd map that as:
>
> addr:street=Abbots Walk
> addr:parentstreet=Boat Lane
>
> I'm not hung up on Abbots Walk being a building rather than a street.
> We're fitting addressing to the best available tags, not the other
> way around.
>
> Regards,
> Paul
>
>
> Hi Paul
>
> For what it's worth, I'm inclined to agree that having only one tag would
> be ideal. The reason I'd go with addr:place is various tools like nominatim
> won't use the address if addr:street doesn't match a highway. So we'll tag
> it but it won't show up in search results, which seems a bit
> self-defeating.
>
> This sounds like "tagging for the renderer"...
>

Hi Colin

I'm sure someone of your great experience is aware that tagging something
in a way that it can be used by geocoders is not "tagging for the renderer"
if the tags are not incorrect. Given we are talking about addresses, and
therefore little more than data fields with a fairly abstract relation to
reality, what is correct really depends on what the wiki says and how it's
interpreted. I would consider `addr:housename=4 Bretton Place` to be
tagging for the renderer. I could borrow a phrase from Andy Townsend in
relation to access tagging and say `addr:street=Bretton Place` was tagging
against the renderer. And, for most of its existence, the wiki page for
addr:street has said "A way with highway=* and the corresponding name
should be found nearby".

And addr:place in particular was rather frowned upon in the discussion in
> December 2020...
>

Was it? I read the whole thread (I think) and could only find you saying
your humble opinion was that a building was not a place. Meanwhile others
suggested its use.

Place has a very broad range of meanings in the English language such as
"...a short row of houses which originally stood by themselves or on a
suburban road; any group of houses not properly classifiable as a street."
"...a physical locality, a locale; a spot, a location."
"A dwelling, a house; a person's home; (formerly) spec. a mansion, a
country house with its surroundings, the principal residence on an estate.
Also: a farm or farmstead." https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/144864
As in the phrase "Do you want to come over to our place?".
It's only when we get to usage 10 that we find "a city, a town, a village."

Meanwhile the wiki for addr:place for a long time said
"... building, which have number, which belongs to all village or some
another polygonal object."
and makes it clear the European villages are an example.

So using it for a group of houses doesn't seem obviously incorrect.

Cheers

Tom

PS. I completely agree with Mark that the wiki has not made any of this
easy, so if any resolution is found it would be great for us to make things
much easier to follow for future mappers.
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