To begin, I recently started editing OpenStreetMap (although I have extensive experience with other collaborative projects like Wikipedia) and I have a few questions regarding best practices:
How should building numbers be added?
I ask because one of my areas of focus has been buildings on military bases and, to the best of my knowledge, most of them are simply referred to as “Building XXX”. I presume this information should normally be placed in the “addr:housenumber” tag, but if it is the only name for a building, it seems like it should go in the “common name” tag. However, this is complicated by the fact that some buildings do have more proper names. (e.g. base map) The problem is then that if the buildings with proper names are named as such and the ones without them are simply “Building XXX”, then the naming scheme is inconsistent. One format I considered was “Building XXX – [Proper Name]”, but that seemed to be less than ideal as it involved putting two different concepts under one tag.
Should buildings be named for the building or the owner/operator?
This is sort of the same issue as above, but in a slightly different way. A similar situation often arises at airports where each hangar has a number assigned by the airport, but is known by the business that occupies it. (e.g. Lunken Airport Airport Layout Plan showing both hangar numbers on map and owner/operators in table at top of page)
How should individual buildings within a location be named and mapped?
Another area of focus of mine is aviation museums. Many museums have multiple hangars with individual names. (e.g. Museum of Aviation campus map) However, as above, if the hangar name is added, then it would preclude the inclusion of the museum name. I presume that the the way it should be handled then is each building named with its individual name and an area drawn to encompass the whole museum campus that is named for the museum.
In some of these cases, the hangars are physically separate buildings. However, in others they have been added onto existing hangars (or are even simply galleries within a single hangar) so that the structure is one contiguous unit. (e.g. Beechcraft Heritage Museum) Is this where the “building part” type should be used? If so, I presume it is intended to be overlaid on top of a regular “building” type area that covers the entire structure? Part of my uncertainty comes from whether the “building part” type is intended to be used for parts of the structure (e.g. roof, walls) or more conceptual divisions (e.g. an exhibit gallery, which may not have walls separating it from other galleries, as is the case in some large museum hangars such as at the National Museum of the United States Air Force).
When should points be used instead of areas?
I’ve come across a number of museums on OpenStreetMap that have their buildings labeled as generic buildings with no names, but are then labeled with a point. It would seem to me that this is not the proper way to handle this and the area itself named for the museum, but I thought there might be some policy behind the difference of which I am not aware.
How do you handle features that fall into more than one type?
For example, most aviation museum buildings could be considered to fall in both the “museum” and “hangar” types? I presume that the suggested method is to use whichever type is more relevant, but I was wondering if there is a way to have multiple types for one feature?
What is the difference between the “hangar” and “hangar building” feature types?
I see that “hangar” links to “aeroway=hangar” and “hangar building” to “building=hangar”, but I am not entirely clear what the significance of this is and when one should be used over the other.
My apologies if these are somewhat basic questions, but I would appreciate any help anyone could provide.