[Talk-GB] OSM UK address project: tags - Updated guidance

[Tom Crocker]

Hi all

Thanks again for your work on this Rob.

I've said this on the talk page but I think worth repeating here. Leaving
the addr:street tag out in between addr:substreet and addr:parentstreet
will  not stop systems that don't recognise these new tags putting an
incorrect street with the addr:housenumber. In the absence of addr:street
and addr:place they are likely to search for the right street as Sarah
Hoffmann explained. Nominatim does this, for example 5 and 7 Oxford Villas
become 5 Oxford Road [1] and 7 Chapel Street [2] using addr:terrace and
addr:substreet respectively. What roughly works here is addr:place for 6
Oxford Villas [3] albeit without parentstreet as yet.

It's also worth noting that nominatim, osmand and presumably others don't
just take tags and make an address, but check the tags match to some
appropriate object. Therefore, addr:street with addr:parentstreet doesn't
work here as Oxford Villas isn't a highway [4]. There is a secondary issue
that some 'substreets' can't be appropriately represented in their own
right but that should probably be fixed for its own sake.

On reflection I think the best solution overall then is going back to
street/place with parentstreet. I don't think any existing misuse of
addr:place in the UK (using it for suburb) is a good reason for abandoning
it, and in any case expecting it to be treated differently than in other
countries surely makes it less likely our schema will be adopted. Some
cleanup of existing tagging seems inevitable so why not clean up clear
misuse? Given the need to match to objects to be represented in other
search systems, the choice between place and street could be made
transparent to the mapper in your app in many cases (does the name match a
highway or something else), and asking 'is this a street' otherwise.

Good luck whatever gets decided!

Tom

[1]
https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/ui/details.html?osmtype=W&osmid=967266502
[2]
https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/ui/details.html?osmtype=W&osmid=967266504

[3]
https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/ui/details.html?osmtype=W&osmid=967266503
[4]
https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/ui/details.html?osmtype=W&osmid=967266505

On Sat, 1 Jan 2022 at 13:05, Rob Nickerson <rob.j.nickerson at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Happy new year to all :-)
>
> Thank you for all the comments received in regards to the addr:* tags and
> how to apply them to map addresses in the United Kingdom. I shared some
> thoughts on how to resolve the comments at the time (e.g. my 22 December
> email [1]). This email is just to confirm that I have now found the time to
> make all the updates to the wiki page. You can view the updated page at:
>
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Addresses_in_the_United_Kingdom
>
> I will keep an eye on the replies here and on the wiki Discussion page so
> feel free to post to either place should you have feedback.
>
> Thank you,
> *Rob*
>
> [1]
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2021-December/028267.html
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-GB mailing list
> Talk-GB at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/attachments/20220108/4fab13ff/attachment.htm>