Hi,
I’ve noticed there are still around 2000 uses of contact:skype in the database. Microsoft shut down Skype in May 2025, so all of these tags are obsolete. Is there any reason to keep those in the database still, or can they be removed?
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They should not be blindly removed but updated after checking the current contact method, and that the business still exists.
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My vote for giving them another year and then just mass delete all of those still existing. Deleting outdated data is a normal part of database maintenance.
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I don’t think removing the indicator for outdated data suppose to be called maintenance.
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I agree to some extend, but if no one cares for such an “indicator” for 2 years apparently no one is really interested in it. Getting rid of such zombie tags is part of the maintenance.
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Just got rid of the only contact:skype left in Belgium – it was identical to contact:phone anyway so it’s not a big loss
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Around where I map it’s not uncommon for POIs to not be resurveyed for five years or more, so “dead” tags can still be useful to find POIs to check
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I have no opinion on this specific case, I am not sure is it an useful indicator.
I strongly disagree with this general claim. Though with “apparently” it is technically true.
I know about some indicators of very bad data and piece by piece I am fixing these affected area.
Some of these tags were added more than decade ago.
contact:skype=* is documented as a Skype user name. I don’t think this user name would imply any other information that we can still glean. But if it looks like an e-mail address or phone number, it might be better to leave it alone and let someone check it more manually. A Skype Number is a valid phone number that some mappers may have mistakenly put in this key. The number might have been ported to Microsoft Teams or another carrier.
This tag has been used more than 2,500 times by Wildberries pickup points and laboratories in Russia.
This is mostly due to outdated JOSM presets that we use in Russia, I created a PR with a fix.
I also removed these tags in Russia. This is a common practice in our community to maintain the relevance of presets and objects in OSM. Also, after the vandalism of all POIs in Russia several years ago, it’s time to forget that the last edit date of an object has any meaning for the POI’s relevance. Time to get used to check_date, folks.
P.S. There are less than 300 POIs left. You can figure out each one manually in a few evenings.
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By the way, for starters, this tag can be marked as deprecated on the wiki(-data).
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I doubt whoever on OSM uses MS Teams would be willing to try every single contact:skype (still present) on Teams
Oh, I’m only referring to Skype Numbers. Skype used to have a block of phone numbers in each country that you could rent out and have forwarded to your Skype client. Now it’s an enterprise service tied to Microsoft Teams. Depending on the country, the number can be ported to a traditional phone carrier.
There’s only one instance left of a phone number in contact:skype=*, in the Netherlands (fewer than this time yesterday). Maybe someone there can make a decision about whether to keep it as phone=*/contact:phone=*. I also see four likely e-mail addresses.
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I’ve added a note in the template that skype has been retired since May 2025.
This is an interesting point. But at the same time it seems a bit wrong to knowingly leave incorrect information in the database. Maybe replace with next_check_date=, or next_check_date:contact=, or fixme:contact=*?
Though on the flip side, you could argue modern OSM data consumers should just ignore contact:skype anyway so it’s not really doing any harm.
The point is more about, if that contact is obviously wrong, how certain are we that the rest is still correct?
At the moment you can filter for contact:skype and make a survey, check online,… to verify it main information are still accurate. If you mass delete them, that possibility is gone.
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Every piece of contact info bitrots independently. Quite often I stumble upon a website=* that silently got cybersquatted and replaced by a Facebook page, but the phone number is still accurate. 
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That’s why I raised the possibility of replacing the tags with fixme:contact or similar instead of deleting them. Then you could still have that filter, but the actual tags would no longer be inaccurate.
But like I said I suppose it’s just as valid to just sort of mentally re-define the existing tag as being the same as a fixme, as long as modern client software is on board with that.
I agree. In general, an old or missing check_date:*=* is a much better indication of bitrot than the presence of a contact:skype tag. But if a place used to have a Skype contact then that could be a indication that you should look to see if they they’ve since replaced Skype with something (rather than just getting rid of it and replacing it with nothing).
[date:"2026-07-13T00:00:00Z"];
nwr["contact:skype"];
out center;
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What would be the replacement for Skype?
On that note, there are a few other tags I’ve glanced over that probably could also be removed, such as contact:icq - ICQ was shut down in June 2024.