[OSM-talk] Business listings

[OJ W]

one way that a business-listings website could work with OSM would be
to let each advertiser 'own' (not exclusively) an OSM node that they
can keep updated from some business-advertising website.

(1) you create an account and say "I want to advertise a
{business_type} at {location}" (doesn't matter if you're the owner or
publisher or just a regular customer).  The website then creates an
OSM node to represent that business (or suggests a nearby node that
already exists)

(2) for each business node that you're maintaining in this website,
you can change the tags using some interface that doesn't care about
lat/lon and nearby objects like every other OSM editor, but just has
key/value or predefined text fields.

(3) they describe the business using the standard OSM tags. name=,
telephone=, website=, opening_hours=, description=, amenity=
addr:housenumber= and all the rest of it.  So a business listing would
look just like a well-mapped object that an OSM mapper might have
added.  Perhaps it even tell them when other people change the data on
'their' node.

and then various websites can display all the business just like
OpenStreetBrowser does, combining the standard nodes that mappers have
just walked past once, with the professional nodes that the owners are
mainaining (or some company which springs-up to sell OSM-promotion to
companies)

the only obvious complication (besides filtering malicious edits on
this external website that's uploading to OSM) might be when a pub or
shop or farm or restaurant node is expanded into a building or
relation by anotehr mapper.