[talk-ph] What level of POIs do we add? (was Click the City)

[Jim Morgan]

OK, well as everyone has an opinion on this one ... :-)

Eugene Alvin Villar wrote, On Wednesday, May 06, 2009 08:20 PM:
> It's tempting to mark out in OSM all of the Jollibee, McDonald's, and
> Starbucks branches in the Philippines but I'm wondering if this is wise.
> Do we mark out every retail store, every bank branch, every Western
> Union/FedEx/LBC outlet, and every company's office in OSM? My personal
> take is that we don't need to.

I can think of at least two ways in which such information would be useful. If you're using Fast food outlets to navigate by then knowing the name is critical: "turn left at the McDonalds". Fast food outlets are actually quite convenient to navigate by because they have BIG signs and instantly recognisable branding which everyone knows. So yes, I can see a use for names here. 

Another use would be if you were looking for an ATM in a certain area. Not all cards work with all banks, so its useful to know the brand of bank you're dealing with. So here again its useful to have the name of the bank. 

> One big problem is multi-storey malls like SM Megamall that have
> hundreds of tenants. It'll be quite unwieldy to maintain and edit
> overlapping POIs in such a small land area.

Definitely. Let people go inside and use the store directory for that. But again, if there is a store visible from the outside, which will help with visual navigation, then sure, why not put it in?

Jim