[Talk-us] Tags to use for chain stores in the United States

[Tod Fitch]

I'd tagged a Dollar General and a Family Dollar as
shop=convenience but based on Russ's comment decided
to change them to variety_store.

After I did that, I wondered what the predominate tagging
was. First cut was to use taginfo to find all the
objects with a name of 'Dollar General' (295 at this time).

I was hoping I could just click on the "Combinations" tab
to see what shop values were used. No such luck. So I
opened all 295 Dollar General named objects in JOSM and
poked around. Found all sorts of tagging including things
like "shop=Dollar General" and amenity=marketplace.

Decided to be a bit more rigorous and saved the XML and
started doing some greps. Here are some approximate numbers:

shop=convenience -> 106
shop=variety_store -> 66
shop=supermarket -> 45
shop=department_store -> 35
shop=discount -> 14
shop=general -> 13
amenity=marketplace -> 12
shop=clothes -> 3
shop=convenience_store -> 1
shop=Dollar Store -> 1
shop=gift -> 1

Seems like there ought to be a much easier way to do
this. Why does "combinations" come up empty?

But it also seems like it is not clear cut that most
mappers consider a Dollar General to be a variety store.

Does anyone have a quicker and easier way to determine the
combination of tags that have been used on objects similar
to what one is mapping?

-Tod

On Wed, December 11, 2013 8:36 am, Brad Neuhauser wrote:
> Personally, I tag "big box" stores like Target, KMart, WalMart etc with
> shop=department_store, just because that seems like the closest fit that
> isn't too restrictive (they're much more than a supermarket, to my mind).
>
> You can pick an area and run Overpass Turbo and see what you get with
> different tags, for example:
> http://overpass-turbo.eu/?value=department_store&key=shop&template=key-value
>
> Alternatively, you can run a search by name (ie
> http://overpass-turbo.eu/?value=Target&key=name&template=key-value) and
> see
> what you get. I did this in Chicago, and found Targets tagged
> department_store, supermarket, and hypermarket(!)
>
> Brad
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 10:08 AM, Russell Deffner
> <russdeffner at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Seems the stores you listed are going to have different tags, example
>> the
>> 'dollar' stores are probably best tagged shop=variety_store, the wiki
>> has a
>> pretty extensive list/description of the shop tags here:
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:shop
>>
>> However, I would say that K-Mart, Target, and Wal-Mart (especially the
>> 'super' kind) maybe don't fit any of the documented tags; I think there
>> was
>> some talk about adding a "big_box" or "superstore", maybe hit up the
>> tagging
>> talk-list to see if that's still in the works.
>>
>> =Russ
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Will Skora [mailto:skorasaurus at gmail.com]
>> Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2013 8:49 AM
>> To: talk-us at openstreetmap.org
>> Subject: [Talk-us] Tags to use for chain stores in the United States
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> At past OSM meetups that I've organized, new mappers have asked me
>> what shop=* tags to use for several chain stores in the USA and I had
>> not found any clear or consistent practices of what tags to use for
>> these stores and even as a relatively experienced mapper, I wasn't
>> sure what tags to encourage them to use.
>>
>> I am writing to hear what you've used, which ones are most popular,
>> and perhaps the US community could build a consensus on them (gasp!).
>>
>> For example, several chain stores that we have wondered about include:
>> K-Mart, Target, Wal-Mart, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Family Dollar,
>> 'Bed, Bath, and Beyond'; TJ Maxx; Marshall's; Radio Shack; Meijer's;
>> Kohl's; Costco; BJ's; and Big Lots.
>>
>> I know there's taginfo (including one for the US!
>> taginfo.openstreetmap.us) but unfortunately, it doesn't let you find
>> out what tag combinations are being used with a name=* (For example,
>> finding what tag is used most often with name=Dollar-General).
>>
>> Regards,
>> Will Skora
>>