[OSM-talk] Tag name vs operator

Andy Allan gravitystorm at gmail.com
Mon Jul 12 23:56:54 BST 2010


On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:25 PM, Pieren <pieren3 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I would like to know how people are using the tag name and/or operator. It
> was obvious for me that operator might come as an additional attribute but
> it seems that the wiki is suggesting to replace name by operator. Or at
> least, it's questionning on the page about amenity=bank:
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dbank

(In English the word "bank" can mean both a banking company and a
building which banking companies serve customers. A 'branch' is one
particular bank building).

Banks seem like a bit of a special case, since people expect the map
to display only the name of the banking company. The name should be
the name of the particular branch something like "HSBC Putney" or
"Santander Hounslow" or whatever that branch is called, but I don't
think many people do that and it's not really that important. The
operator would be the name of the company in any case.

> where the section "tags to use in combination" suggests 'operator' but the
> template says 'name=*', 'operator=*'.
> Then now the question : how can we determin if we use 'name' or 'operator'
> if it is one or the other ? e.g. restaurants or hotel might or might not be
> part of a chain, thus might be tagged with 'name' or 'operator'. Shall know
> the door to ask ?
> Or can I restore the tag 'name' in the wiki as it was till january 2009 ?

In every case the restaurant or the hotel should be tagged with the
name of that restaurant or hotel, which is usually displayed on the
outside of the building. If the name of the company which operates the
hotel is also known, then it should be added as the operator.

I've updated the wiki page on operator to make this clearer.

Cheers,
Andy




More information about the talk mailing list