I just stumbled on a hiking tour over the fact that places, where you can fill your bottle for a little fee are not covered by amenity=drinking_water (and therefore not rendered and not found by such a restricted search). The one I saw was tagged as amenity=vending_machinevending=water which is not really rare.
I’m not really happy with it. (At least running thirsty through a small town in the last summer).
Looking through the practice there are at the moment 3261 nodes with amenity=drinking_water (overpass turbo) and fee=yes (where I’m quite sure that they are predominantly vending machines), and 3054 nodes with amenity=vending_machine vending=water (overpass turbo).
At least - I think it should be mentioned in the wikis. Better would be a decision for a unification.
I’m not sure that that is true - looking at taginfo, a number of what appear to be rendering projects do mention it. Do those projects really not render it?
Even with those that don’t handle water explicitly, it might still be obvious from the name what you’re getting.
The most of the projects are mapping, not rendering projects. Some seem to have a complete different focus, cyclosm is mentioned, but doesn’t render in default layers, as mapnik and the other standard maps of the site openstreetmap.org don’t.
I think parsing the name tag won’t be feasible.
The point was that I was looking for a water tap, just looked on the map and added an overpass query for amenity=drinking_water (for there you would get taps, fountains - different ways to drinking water). Afterwards I was surprised about this vending machine: Node: L'acqua del Sindaco (11245449674) | OpenStreetMap
And saw yesterday as I wanted to add that to the map that it’s already mapped, and that half of these machines seem to be tagged as amenity=vending_machine and the other half amenity=drinking_water.
I’m happy to learn also to look after drinking_water=yes or maybe better [~“drinking_water:.*”~“yes”] (3078 finds, 759 of them have NO amenity tag at all).
But still the questions:
What tagging should be recommended? [amenity=drinking_water][fee=yes] or [amenity=vending_machine][vending=water]. The taggings exclude each other.
Shouldn’t there be at least cross references to the different ways to tag availability of drinking water at least on each wiki page? (wiki pages: amenity=drinking_water; vending=water; key drinking_water…) And: What other taggings are there?
What do you mean by that? Do you mean places where you can fill your bottle for a fee are not currently mapped as amenity=drinking_water, or that the Wiki says that they shouldn’t be mapped as such?
Having never seen either, I would expect them to be different things. I’d expect an amenity=vending_machine vending=water to sell bottled water like this, whereas if I saw a machine that charges me for the privilege of refilling my own bottle, I would tag that as amenity=drinking_water fee=yes.
amenity=vending_machine + vending=water is a machine selling bottled water
amenity=drinking_water + fee=yes is a place where you can fill your own container with drinking water, with a machine that forces you to pay for it (I’ve never seen one so don’t know what such a thing looks like)
drinking_water:refill=yes is a place where you can have your container with drinkign water for free.
These different facilities need to be described as such on the wiki pages (with photo) and cross-referenced to each other under the “See also” heading. Maybe we should recommend that they should also be tagged with drinking_water=yes so that someone looking for any kind of drinking water will find all three.
I just stumbled on a hiking tour over the fact that places, where you can fill your bottle for a little fee are not covered by amenity=drinking_water (and therefore not rendered and not found by such a restricted search). The one I saw was tagged as amenity=vending_machinevending=water which is not really rare.
There are many more features that provide drinking water but are not tagged with either amenity=drinking_water nor amenity=vending_machine, e.g. fountains (amenity=fountain), watering places, springs, wells, etc.
The solution is performing a better search query rather than tagging all these the same. I think tagging vending machines selling water as such is correct, regardless of the price. If you are thirsty there is an essential difference in having to pay something (even if it is just 5 cent a liter) and nothing (so you don’t need to have any money with you, nor coins in the correct size). If you are willing to pay for water, there are many more places to include in your query anyway (cafes, pubs, supermarkets, shops, kiosks, …)
Obviously supermarkets will sell bottled water but I would expect a pub or a cafe to fill your bottle with tap water for free.
this is completely up to the operator, I have encountered staff in Switzerland “secretly” filling my water bottle and telling me it was forbidden for them, and seen prices like 1,60 Eur in German restaurants for half a liter of tap water, (6 eur for 0.7-1l of mineral water seems normal to Germans) while in Italy it is unusual to ask for a bottle refill (I guess it’s about 70% that they would do it for free, or 98% if you have small children) in such places (drinking fountains are almost ubiquitous though), Italy is generally a country where people do not try to enrich by selling you water (one liter of water in a restaurant is typically 2 eur, half a bottled liter from a vending machine 50-60ct). I have had similar experiences in the south of France and Spain, I guess as it is potentially more dangerous to become dehydrated in these hot regions water is considered more as an amenity that should be provided for everyone for free.
This is currently not documented in the wiki and it should be discussed to what extent it is a consense about that. Then we could add that to the wiki.
I suspect that most of [amenity=vending_machine][vending=water] (not: vending=water;…] in fact are places for refill. Most nodes seem to be in Italy like my example. I have seen lots of machines vending bottled or canned drinks including water - but no one vending bottled water exclusively. (Implied by “vending=water”).
That would make it easier for nerds like me that use overpass queries on a hiking tour, ( nwr[~“.*”~“drinking_water”]; nwr[drinking_water=yes]; ) looks fine (without checking the syntax…) - but I think it may also be sufficient to clear up and add to the wiki and add the references not only for the mappers but also for the data users. I would be curious to hear other opinions on this.
I the UK pubs and restaurants have to give you free tap water if you ask by law. In France its standard practice to bring a carafe of water meal. Certainly as a customer it’s not a huge leap to ask them to fill a water bottle.
In the UK there is a scheme where businesses display a blue sticker scheme which shows places that fill water bottles for free, no purchase necessary.
I can remember it being discussed on @talk-gb about tagging but there were issues with it not being opendata.
In the UK there is a scheme where businesses display a blue sticker scheme which shows places that fill water bottles for free, no purchase necessary.
this can be tagged, while a general obligation for businesses to give water for free (not visible on the ground) would probably fall under the rule to not tag general law.
