Bring back Tag:industrial=machine_shop

General talk Tagging general discussion
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According to Wikipedia “In a machine shop, machinists use machine tools and cutting tools to make parts, usually of metal or plastic”, but once the concept gets to OSM it seems to break down to multiple concepts:

a) The facility is a factory which contains a machine shop to manufacture pieces to go into the company’s own products or the associated prototyping in accordance with the factory’s own blueprint. What’s being sold to the client is not the services of the machine shop on their own, but the tangible finished product.

b) The facility is a job shop or a contract manufacturer. The client brings in a blueprint or a concept specific enough to create the CAD/CAM design, the machine shop creates the part and the client owns both blueprint and the finished pieces. What’s being sold is the machine shop service as a standalone item much like Tag:shop=3d_printing specifies that “a 3D printing shop offers 3D printing as a service”.

c) the facility is a factory that actually makes machines.

I’d expect that the appropriate tags are:

a) Tag:man_made=works and Key:product - OpenStreetMap Wiki = * as the machine shop is internal to the factory, where we don’t care as it’s the final product that’s sold. We list just the output.

b) Tag:industrial=machine_shop - OpenStreetMap Wiki if the machinist’s talents are marketed independently, so that any client can bring their own blueprints and get custom parts made.

c) Tag:product=machinery - OpenStreetMap Wiki if this factory actually makes machines.

Unfortunately, what’s currently on the wiki either fails to distinguish (a) from (b) or muddles all three concepts together. Tag:industrial=machine_shop is marked as “deprecated” on the pretext that " The recommended replacement is:Tag:man_made=works + Key:product =* ." which makes no sense as (b) and (a) are different concepts.

Is the facility a factory making a product, or is it a job shop taking custom requests from clients?

The description on Tag:product=machinery as “place where a variety of parts are machined for different companies” is just plain wrong; that’s (b) - a freestanding machine shop - when the product=machinery tag should actually be (c) - a factory making machines. That’s what’s on the wiki’s Key:product description “product=machinery when output is machinery” currently.

I propose that Tag:industrial=machine_shop be un-deprecated and put back into use where (b) the services of the machine shop are being marketed directly instead of (a) the machine shop being captive and integral to a factory’s making its own product, the associated prototypes or whatever the facility creates for its own use.

The associated wiki entries will also need to be corrected as they are currently contradictory or wrong.

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I notice on the page history:
1 May 2021 Adamant1 “Removed tag that has zero usage” (despite showing 530 uses) & “Depreciated tag for more widely used and accepted ones”, so you could ask them about it, & if it was discussed at all before they decided to deprecate it? Certainly nothing showing in the Apr 2021 Tagging archive.

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It wasn’t a widely used tag, and the pre-“deprecation” version of the page didn’t have much actual content, but to say that the recommended replacement is: man_made=works + product=machinery simply makes no sense.

I can’t see any discussion of the “deprecation”, so I’d be tempted to wait a couple of days for anyone to comment here, and then if no-one does, take that warning off the page and add a bit more documentation (as you have above!) to it explaining how the tag has been used.

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The original 2021-era discussion is https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Key:industrial#Feature_vs._landuse and the next section below it, Talk:Key:industrial#parallel_tagging,_man_made=works

It looks like one other user (Dieterdreist) said " Somehow people have started developing and refining the tagging of industrial sites with the intent to describe production features by using landuse tags. Actually there is already a scheme for factories, suitable for feature tagging, rather than land use: Tag:man_made:works and subtags." and Adamant1 took this as an invitation to go merrily deprecating tags, anything with landuse=industrial + industrial=(product_name), “So far I’ve dealt with industrial=factory‎‎, industrial=machine shop‎‎, industrial=rice mill‎, industrial=furniture‎‎, industrial=steelmaking‎, industrial=brewery‎, industrial=food industry‎‎, and industrial=food processing‎. I’m still going through the other ones…”

Therein lies the rub. A steelmaker makes steel, a rice mill makes rice and some of the others follow that pattern, but does a machine_shop make machines? Most likely, no. A machine shop uses machines to make various custom metal or plastic parts in accordance with the customer’s design or blueprint. Those parts could be pretty much anything, and will change from one client or one job to the next.

So any attempt to deprecate industrial=machine_shop in favour of man_made=works + product=… is going to cause a problem, as “machine shop” is a service while the man_made works are products.

There is a discussion open at Talk:Tag:product=machinery - OpenStreetMap Wiki and the user who originally deprecated industrial=machine_shop is making bizarre suggestions that it be replaced with anything from leisure=hackerspace to craft=*. None of these suggestions make any sense.

This user has a pattern of “deprecating” tags and trying to get them replaced by different tags which they believe to be equivalent, but which are actually different in some way. For instance, a few days ago (on 24-25 Jan) they were edit-warring to blank Tag:workshop=repair_cafe - OpenStreetMap Wiki and replace it with a {{deprecated}} tag pointing to leisure=hackerspace which, again, doesn’t make sense. A hacker space or maker space can be used to create new things, while a repair café only fixes existing, broken things. Not the same beast.

As far as I can tell, the only reason landuse=industrial + industrial=machine_shop was marked as deprecated is that one user doesn’t like that “industrial” is a land use tag. Too bad. We do need a tag for “machine shop” so, if it isn’t in its original “industrial” key spot, then it should go to workshop=machine_shop (or the equivalent positions in ‘shop’ or ‘amenity’ as less-desirable alternates). A machine shop is a “shop” as in workshop, not a “shop” as in a retail store selling machines or something crazy.

I think that the tag should have been left well enough alone and the “deprecated” removed from industrial=machine_shop. My second choice would be workshop=machine_shop, but it seems like a rather pointless change if the old tag is still in use on multiple individual machine shops worldwide.

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Can’t see any real problem with restoring it. As SE said, give it a couple of days to see if there are any huge objections & go for it!

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I notice on the page history:
1 May 2021 Adamant1 “Removed tag that has zero usage” (despite showing 530 uses)

I have been engaging in discussions with Adamant about his removal of zero-usage tagging mistakes because I believe listing problem tags is still valid even when the usage reaches zero at a certain point, but ultimately gave up because he insisted and I didn’t sufficiently care

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A machine shop is a “shop” as in workshop, not a “shop” as in a retail store selling machines or something crazy.

a shop=hairdresser is not selling hairdressers either

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And you can’t buy a street at a “street sale (Straßenverkauf)”.

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Oh dear. That looks like a resurrection of a dispute between two OSMers who have a history of personal disputes, with fault on both sides. As that link suggests, the DWG are aware of that particular issue. I’m not dealing with it myself, but someone who is very familiar with the history of the dispute between these individuals is. For the avoidance of doubt, the DWG doesn’t normally get involved in wiki disputes but sometimes does when they spill over from the “real world” of OSM editing (as has happened a couple of times with these two individuals in the past).

Andy, from the DWG

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but repair=assisted_self_service is also not always the same as a workshop=repair_cafe

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My personal opinion is that there almost as many varieties of this sort of thing as there are the things themselves, so It’d be silly to police the wiki to try and enforce certain sorts of tagging.

Let people tag what they want; data consumers will sort out out.

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Let people tag what they want; data consumers will sort out out.

+1, this is generally a good advice.

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I don’t really feel like getting into the issues with RTFM because it’s a separate thing. I say though that there’s obviously a difference between letting people tag what they want and telling them how to tag something.

In the meantime no one being half good faithed about this would disagree that the Wiki is suppose to be descriptive, not prescriptive. In this particular for whatever reason Carlb thinks it should be the former, that if we just insert a 1/1 copy of the dictionary defining of a machine shop that people will somehow magically follow it and the tag will be consistently used. That’s obviously not how it works though.

In the meantime I’ve spent a ton of time researching this and similar tags. The fact is that none of them are being used consistently or as intended. It’s rather dishonest to act like that’s not the case or treat this all we need to do is follow a Wikipedia article for the tag to be used properly, whatever that means. It’s rather insulting to treat me like I’m just inserting factually-wrong information into articles and somehow harming the project in the process when I’ve the one whos spent the time and effort researching this and Carlb is self-admittedly a infrequent user who is mostly ignorant of details.

Sure, I have a long-term dispute with RTFM. So do a lot of other people. That doesn’t mean that this is just a petty dispute between me and him or that I didn’t put in the time to understand what I was doing and why I was doing it before I made the edits. I can guarantee the same can’t be said for RTFM, the dude could literally give a crap about how tags are actually being. His version of “documenting” tags is simply him saying what his personal opinions are and then accusing everyone who disagree with him of being retarded trolls. I’m not doing that. Every edit I make is based on research and a lot of thought. Carlb even said he just got involved in this and doesn’t contribute much. So why not give me the benefit of the doubt about it? Or think what you want about me, but at least put the time into finding something else that actually works and will be used consistently. That’s all I really care about.

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As I’ve said like 4 times now the reason I marked it that way is because the term “machine shop” is ambiguous and the tag is being used on a range of different objects that seem to have nothing in common. Except some of them can clearly be better tagged as Tag:man_made=works + Key:product =*. So that was what I choose as the alternative at the time. I’m sure there’s other tags out that would work better. I don’t really give care about what specific tag the POIs are ultimately re-tagged as. The important thing is not using Tag:industrial=machine_shop as an ambiguous catch all, which I don’t see you having a solution to.

That’s one of the ways it’s currently being used though and I don’t think doing a simple copy paste into the article of what Wikipedia says about machine shops into the article is going to magically correct the problem or make people use the tag how you think they be using it. The problem here is that in general parlance a machine shop can be anything from your average backyard garage with a table saw, some random screw bits, and a few pieces of wood, to warehouse where a college holds it’s mechanics class, and more industrial sized factories that produce prototypes or whatever. It’s the same problem with “workshop shop” BTW.

You can’t get over that just by re-writing the article and trying to police people into using your definition either. The tags are fundamentally flawed. There’s also already much less flawed alternatives out there that are perfectly fine to use instead. Key:product =* being one. I’m sure there’s others. There’s no legitimate reason not to just them instead of this either.

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It is not a problem, in my opinion, on the contrary the general parlance as you say makes it a good tag: you just described what I understand is a “machine shop”.

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No. That simply isn’t an accurate representation what was said above.

Yes, you have a dispute with RTFM (as noted above). Both of you are culpable in that dispute.

However, your last edit to this wiki page was here. That contains the text “The recommended replacement is: man_made=works + product=machinery.” which I mentioned above simply makes no sense.

Personally I believe that the wiki would form better documentation for everyone if you didn’t edit it. For completeness’ sake, RTFM’s only contribution to this page was this, mentioning some tags that they considered similar; not a huge contribution to the problem here.

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It makes sense in places where the tag is being used on places that could or would be better tagged as “man_made=works + product=machinery.” Of course you would think it doesn’t make sense in general though because 1. You didn’t look into how the tag is being ahead of time before forming an opinion about it 2. As the second part of your part comment makes clear, you just seem to have an issue with everything I do for some reason regardless of what the facts are or who’s actually correct. that’s not my problem though and it has nothing to do with the particulars of this specific disagreement.

Does that mean every single instance of industrial=machine_shop should be re-tagged as “man_made=works + product=machinery”? No of course not. Just a good portion of the ones I looked into. I never claimed otherwise either, but that’s how the Wiki works. Someone creates an article for a fringe tag. Someone else comes along, researches it, finds out it’s a bad tag for some reason (like there’s better alternatives) and either depreciates the article or adds a “disputed” banner to it. That happens all the time. I’m sorry you have such an issue with me doing the normal process that literally everyone else does in the exact same situations though. Sorry dude. Maybe stop with the bad faith axe grinding :man_shrugging:

Cool for you. I believe the platform in general would be better if every discussion involving me, you, and a couple of other users didn’t turn into personal attacks and axe grinding. That never seems to happen for some reason though because certain people including you love to attack me for extremely biennial, run of the mill editing. So it is what it is.

In the meantime, I don’t even edit the Wiki that much and most or all of the edits I do are extremely none controversial. Essentially the only person I have an issue with is RTFM. In this case, you can look at most of the edits I’ve made around him and either other people made exactly the same edits I did before I made them or they reverted his edits back to how I had edited the articles before him. So I really could give a crap what your opinion about it is.

If you don’t like that I reverted RTFM on the DE:Tag:shop=variety_store article though, cool. Mateusz Konieczny made the exact same edit I did and I don’t see anyone having an issue with it. Same goes for a bunch of other articles where users reverted the same exacts edits I did. I’m the only one who anyone seems to care about when I do it for some reason :man_shrugging: Mateusz Konieczny, Jeisenbe, and a few other people spent years edit waring RTFM and no one ever batted an eye about it though, including you. So sorry, but I don’t really care what your opinion is about how I edit the Wiki.

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That’s fine. I’m glad you think it’s a good tag. In no way does depreciating a tag or marking it as controversial make it so people can’t continue using it if they want to. Although there is a point where if a tag is to ambiguous in how it’s being applied it loses it’s usefulness for the general Openstreetmap community writ-large. Especially in cases where there are 1/1 better tags that can be applied to POIs, which in this case there obviously are. Nothing is stopping you from using the tag if you want to do though. Like I said in my last message, all I was doing by depreciating the tag was following the same process everyone else does in similar situations. Of course it’s just a recommendation and like I’ve said other places I’m more then willing to discuss a better way forward or do things differently if there is no consensus to depreciate the tag. I never claimed otherwise either.

But that doesn’t negate the fact that the tag loses it’s usefulness compared to the alternatives if it’s being used on a wide range of different objects that don’t have anything in common. Apparently no one wants to discuss that though, which is fine. Honestly, I could really give a crap about this beyond the original edits. At the end of the day people are going to do what they want. Just like people are going to mark an article as controversial or depreciated if the tag is ambiguous and there’s better ones out there.

I’ll meet people like @SomeoneElse half way and say there’s probably a conversation that could be had about when that should or shouldn’t be done, but at this point there isn’t really any guideline or policy about it and I have better things to do then be the one to start the discussion. If someone else (a person, not @SomeoneElse) wants to start a separate thread or something about it, be my guest. I’m more then happy to follow whatever consensus comes out of it. In the meantime I’m going to edit the Wiki however I feel like editing it though :man_shrugging:

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Of course I did. Usage that I looked at was very regionally dependent (as to be expected from an article that was only a stub) and was split between “small engineering organisations” (in Germany they’d be part of the Mittelstand) and a specific engineering function within a larger organisation. The vast majority were not really “product=machinery” in any real sense.

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on a side note, the term “Mittelstand” is typically used for businesses with up to 500 employees and 50 million EUR sales revenue, so many of these are not really “small”, but they aren’t huge enterprises either.