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

[tonyosm9 at gmail.com]

As we seem to be agreed not to use place but substreet or parent street can I put my tuppence in to support substreet.
My logic is that addresses in GB are read from lowest to highest - 4, Rose Terrace, Garden Street, Myvillage, Mycity. Using the word parentstreet suggests to me it is superior to street and would appear after street in the hierarchy of street, conversely substreet is lower in the hierarchy and therefore closer to the top part of the address. So I prefer Sarah's version 
addr:housenumber=4
addr:substreet=Rose Terrace
addr:street=Garden Street

As usual in GB there will be lots of edge cases which will not fit whatever we decide - companies and people have made things up as there has been no official government addressing schema, and some addresses are streets away from their  company applied address - https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/215406779#map=16/53.7052/-2.6456&layers=TN (which is also factually wrong) https://storelocator.asda.com/north-west/chorley/clayton-green-centre-sheephill-lane

Aside -  there is also the descriptive style of addressing - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-59900687?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA

Tony Shield - TonyS999

On 09/01/2022 10:49, Sarah Hoffmann via Talk-GB <talk-gb at openstreetmap.org> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Rob has asked me to comment on the current state of the discussion from
> my point of view as Nominatim developer. Following his lead, I won't
> answer anybody in particular but just summarize my views.
> 
> I do have been following the discussion closely. It all looks quite
> reasonable so that there was no need to add to the noise.
> Thank you for taking the time to start a wiki page.
> 
> The most pressing point from my side was the (ab)use of the addr:street
> tag that are not streets. I think that point has been understood and
> is well addressed in all suggestions. As Tom notes, Nominatim does do a
> match-up with the street object. This is not just a technical
> optimisation. The street object can deliver useful additional
> information, for example name translation in bilingual places like
> Brussels. That's why Nominatim is rather unforgiving when there is no
> street with the same name as in addr:street. (If you want to find issues
> on that side, the QA view 'addr:street wrong name'
> https://nominatim.org/qa/#map=7.57/53.49/-1.00&layer=addr_street_wrong_name
> shows where Nominatim disagrees on your choice of addr:street.)
> 
> Regarding the opposing proposals of addr:substreet (as currently in the
> wiki) and addr:parentstreet (as proposed by Simon Poole and Tom
> Crocker), they work both from a data user point of view as far as I can
> see. Which one you go for depends on whether you put more emphasis on
> the dependent street or the parent street in an address:
> 
> Say you have an address like '4 Rose Terrace, Garden Street'. You can
> tag this as:
> 
> addr:housenumber=4
> addr:substreet=Rose Terrace
> addr:street=Garden Street
> 
> A data user who does not know about the UK system would output an
> address of '4 Garden Street'.
> 
> Or you could tag the address as:
> 
> addr:housenumber=4
> addr:place=Rose Terrace
> addr:parentstreet=Garden Street
> 
> which our unsuspecting data user would read as '4 Rose Terrace'.
> 
> Which one is less wrong? Initially I thought the first version would be
> better because it brings you at least in the vicinity of the right
> address. In the meantime I have learnt that there may well be an
> actual address '4 Garden Street'. So I see the potential for confusion.
> 
> I also had some reservations about using addr:place for something like a
> building or a terrace. When it was invented, they idea was that it
> refers to some place= node (hence addr:place), i.e. something that is
> conceptually above street level. However, thinking more about it, this
> is just a historical detail and not that relevant. The important
> function of addr:place is to mark a non-street address. If the place is
> above or below street-level address-wise is an implementation detail
> that can be covered with addr:parentstreet.
> 
> You'll know British addresses better than me, so you'll decide if you
> prefer addr:substreet or addr:parentstreet. Data users will thank you
> if you go for one or the other, not both. And don't forget to add it
> to the main addr:* page in the wiki when you have decided. There might
> be other places after all with a similar concept that might want to
> reuse the tags.
> 
> A quick word on the other address tags: Nominatim doesn't really care
> what exactly you use there. It will use them pretty much all for search.
> My advice would be to a) always use addr:city for the postal town (i.e.
> the name you put next to the postcode in the address) and b) only add
> names that would show up in the address. If 'address' then refers to the
> official RM address or the address used by any sane human being
> (or both) doesn't really matter. Just remember that if you don't put one
> or the other into the address tags and it doesn't correspond to the
> geographical location either, then the address won't be found. (SK53's
> example in Scotland was a perfect example of a RM address that is
> unsearchable unless added to the addr:* tags.)
> 
> Sarah
> 
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