[Talk-GB] addr:place cleanup process

[Tom Crocker]

Hi Rob

Given there have been no objections so far I changed a few on the list -
all of which seemed uncontroversial and would be easy to revert if there
were strong objections. I realised that, perhaps unsurprisingly, there are
clusters where a mapper has taken this approach, including some of our most
active and longstanding mappers. I was thinking it would be courteous as
well as helpful for future cleanup to drop them a note and explain the
problem and proposed solution. Personally, if they were unhappy with
addr:suburb and wanted to suggest addr:village, addr:hamlet, etc on a case
by case basis, I would go with that as it would resolve the addr:place with
addr:street ambiguity, be understandable by anyone who wanted to, and
usually that middle bit is unnecessary, especially when combined with a
postcode.

What do you think?

Tom

On Thu, 13 Jan 2022 at 23:57, Rob Nickerson <rob.j.nickerson at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> As we learnt the other week, the addr:place tag has often been incorrectly
> used here in the UK. The tag addr:place is meant to be used when the
> address does *not* reference a street (tagged with addr:street) at all.
> This is frequently seen in small villages in continental Europe which often
> don't have any street names at all.
>
> In the UK most cases of addr:place and addr:street being used together are
> incorrect and are cases where addr:suburb should have been used instead of
> addr:place. You can browse the Nominatim QA
> <https://nominatim.org/qa/#map=8.06/53.26/-0.64&layer=addr_place_and_street>
> to find examples and help clean these up.
>
> To help with this clean up effort I have tested an approach in JOSM that
> some might consider as captured by the Automated Edits code of conduct. I
> therefore wanted to share this process before proceeding.
>
> Step 1:
> Identify a potentially incorrect use of the addr:place tag. To do this I
> am looking at the list of values used on TagInfo GB and checking if any of
> these are villages/towns. If they are then there is a high chance that the
> addr:place tag is incorrect.
> https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org.uk/keys/addr%3Aplace#values
>
> Step 2:
> Open the data in JOSM using an overpass query. An example query I am using
> to download the data is:
>
> [out:xml][timeout:90];
> {{geocodeArea:England}}->.searchArea;
> (
>   nwr["addr:place"="Eccleston"](area.searchArea);
> );
> (._;>;);
> out meta;
>
> Step 3:
> Inspect the data in JOSM paying particular attention to other addr:* tags.
> To do this I start by doing a Ctrl+F and search for e.g.
> "addr:place"="Eccleston". This selects all the features with this tag. I
> can then see the full range of addr:* tags used on these features. High use
> of addr:street reiterates the incorrect use of addr:place. I can also see
> if the addr:suburb tag has been used on any features -> if it has then I go
> investigate this separately. I also investigate uses of all other addr tags
> except housenumber/name, unit, flats and street.
>
> Step 4
> Change addr:place to add:suburb. I get to this stage quicker if step 3
> does not identify any conflicting addr:* tags (e.g. if the only other addr
> tags are housenumber/name and street). The more addr:* tags there are the
> more I look into individual OSM features before making this change.
>
> As always, if in doubt then I don't proceed.
>
> How do you feel about this sort of approach? With proper time spent
> carefully looking at the other addr tags that have been used, then I
> believe it is a low risk edit.
>
> P.S. Feel free to check out the results of a couple trials I made. e.g.
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/116122672#map=14/53.6500/-2.7281
> I'll pause on making more as I realise I should get the discussion going
> first.
>
> Thank you,
> *Rob*
> _______________________________________________
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> Talk-GB at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
>
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