Gulf branded petrol stations in the UK

[Robert_Whittaker]

Over in another thread, @SomeoneElse wrote:

As an example I’ve just unentangled the brand of this fuel station from the American corporation of the same name. Some of the story is here - it’s complicated. There is no wikidata entry for the current company, though there is for a sister company and its parent (though note that the sister company is misspelt there and Gulf isn’t mentioned at all).

I’ve just checked my UK Brands page, and it turns out we have about 229 objects in the uk tagged with brand:wikidata=Q5617505. Presumably these are mostly petrol stations. I don’t know how many are currently still branded as “Gulf” though.

Assuming there are quite a few, it would be good to agree on the brand tagging for them, if necessary create a new wikidata item for the UK brand, ensure editor presets reflect the agreed tagging, and then ensure that the UK tagging is consistent.

I could see an argument that if those petrol stations are using the same “Gulf” brand - even if it’s under licence - then they should have the main Q5617505 brand tag. However, if the brand in the UK is being managed by a completely separate company, it might well make more sense to have a separate wikidata item and use that instead.

What do people think?

[adventure1]

I can conform the petrol station I drive past every day is still Branded as Gulf. I didn’t realise though until it came up on a Fuel comparison website. Locally it has a different name but there is Gulf branding still on the station.

[Morlark]

This seems to be broadly the same principle as the TUI thread from a few weeks ago. The question fundamentally distills down to: is the brand tag intended to describe the corporate operator of a POI, or does it describe the brand?

The name of the tag (and the conclusion in the previous thread) was that it transparently should be the latter.

The linked wikipedia page seems to suggest that the current use of the Gulf brand in the UK is under license from GOI. Therefore the Q5617505 tag is correct.