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

Sun Jan 9 12:23:31 UTC 2022

Am 09.01.2022 um 12:54 schrieb 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

There is no hierarchical nor visual difference between that and

/addr:street=Rose Terrace//
//addr:parentstreet=Garden Street/

But this variant allows addr:street (and addr:place) to work just as for 
addresses that don't require an additional level of hierarchy, and 
avoids confusion with addresses that actually require an 
addr:street=Garden Street

Simon


>
> 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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>>
>
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