[OSM-talk] Chain Store Cleanup

Andrew MacKinnon andrewpmk at gmail.com
Sat May 2 01:18:42 UTC 2015


> It is also an easy fallacy to think that if the marketing people of some
> chain decide to spell their name differently, we could or should simply
> replace all names to what they "should" be - no we don't, we only change
> the name when the store changes its lettering.

Another issue. If a store changes name a mechanical edit does not make
sense because usually new signs get put up gradually. For instance
Domino's Pizza changed its name to Domino's and is running TV ads
promoting this, but there are still old signs that say "Domino's
Pizza". The same thing applies if a chain store goes out of business
because usually not all stores close at the same time and there may
still be some stores open. I am concerned with stores that are wrong.
McDonalds and Tim Horton's are wrong as far as I know. The same is
true with an amenity=restaurant called Subway, since it should be
amenity=fast_food and any Subway that is not the well known chain
would almost certainly be sued by the well known chain and forced to
changed its name.

On Fri, May 1, 2015 at 11:31 AM, Mike N <niceman at att.net> wrote:
> On 5/1/2015 11:07 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>>
>> That's a very "computer person" approach to take. In fact, the
>> "McDonald's" issue has already been tried by someone in the past with an
>> undiscussed mechanical edit, promptly falsifying a few non-chain
>> non-fastfood places that*really*  were called McDonalds just as you
>> mention.
>
>
>   The proposed edit doesn't seem to match the previous mass Search/Replace
> edit.   It should also be possible to confirm each location against the
> McDonalds store locator or a store list from McDonalds.
>
>> It is also an easy fallacy to think that if the marketing people of some
>> chain decide to spell their name differently, we could or should simply
>> replace all names to what they "should" be - no we don't, we only change
>> the name when the store changes its lettering.
>
>
>   I as a local mapper would never notice such a change in 100 years of going
> back to audit POIs.   A remote mapper change would correct this properly if
> checked against corporate data, complete with proper tagging for old_name -
> this would assist searches for the new name.
>
>  The argument is strongly *for* informed, remote changes, assuming that the
> data in OSM is to be of some use to data consumers.
>
>
>
>
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