[OSM-talk] Place of worship

[Ed Loach]

Pierre-Alain wrote:

> I got a question about religious tags.

Not answering your question as such, but it would be nice if things
like amenity=hospital, amenity=school, amenity=place_of_worship and
others could be brought into some sort of common standard.

Amenity=school is often used to mark the extent of the school
grounds with individual buildings being added with a building=* tag
(picking an example not by me http://osm.org/go/0ESiEzF@T- )

I have seen hospitals similarly mapped (though sometimes I've seen a
building tagged with both building=hospital and amenity=hospital,
all on a larger area tagged amenity=hospital), or on its own.

Amenity=place_of_worship though seems to be targeted specifically at
a building (node or closed way), so not (as) suitable for this as
schools and hospitals (especially with the current Mapnik style of
dark grey which hides any buildings on any amenity tagged areas
which I have seen somewhere once).

There are probably more amenity values similar, though these are the
three that spring to mind. This has probably already been covered
before, here and on the wiki, but I would say the above are
candidates to be dropped from amenity= and have both a landuse= for
the area and a building= equivalent for each. I realise there are
loads in the database, editors have presets, lots of people are
using them already, but standardising on their usage would make
things easier for newer mappers to pick up and presumably consumers
of the data.

It's a minor annoyance which is why I mention it. It's not a big
enough annoyance for me to start suggesting major changes unless
other people think it worthwhile and achievable.

Ed