I’ve been adding and editing various aircraft on static display (e.g. gate guardians on poles at military bases) and in the process have seen several methods for marking such features. I have been marking them as a point of the historic site type with the aircraft subtype as this seems to be the best fit. However, there are some aircraft out there that have already been mapped as areas based on their outlines and labeled as tourist attractions. However, tourist attraction does not seem to be the best way to describe such features. The problem is that converting an area that is a tourist attraction to a historic site results in the feature no longer showing up on the standard OSM viewer. Therefore, my questions are threefold:
What type should static display aircraft be?
Should static display aircraft be marked as areas or points?
If the former, is there a way to make historic sites show up on the standard viewer?
I recently learned about the policy of not “tagging for the renderer”, which leads me to believe the answer to the second question is that they should be mapped as points. It is also worth noting that aircraft have also been mapped as memorials, which show up on the standard renderer, but I believe only as points and not outlines. Furthermore, while more appropriate than the tourist attraction type, it still does not seem as accurate as historic site.
My personal opinion, I am sure there are others with other opinions
It depends. I come back to it further down.
Points.
How a displayed aircraft should (or could) be tagged depends in my eyes from several points.
It can be a tourist attraction if it’s main purpose is to attract visitors to come and have a look at or inside it.
It can be a memorial if it is placed at a location that was important for this type of airplane. Like with most of those placed at the entrance of an air-base.
It can even be mapped as something different Node: STF Jumbo Stay Stockholm (1357913897) | OpenStreetMap which shows it’s purpose. This plane is mapped as a point and as an area, with the size and the purpose the area might make sense here, so even point 2 is not 100% yes or no.
Somehow I missed that page. Thanks for pointing it out.
Good point. To correct my omission, the Castle Air Museum is an example of one where the the aircraft are outlined, but the features have been changed to the historic site type so they are no longer visible on the standard viewer.
The problem with the “standard OSM viewer” is that it largely relies on the tags and values in use in OSM before 2014, based on cartography from Steve Chilton from considerably earlier. It has resisted changes that might allow it to show more data or data more reflective of what’s in OSM now. There are better renderers literally available on the menu in osm.org itself.
I’ve seen both the “outline” and “node” representations in decent quantities. I don’t think either are wrong.
I recently(ish) added lots of things into our local air museum if you want to look over some of it. I used historic=aircraft as per the wiki. I think the sub-tagging needs lots of work but it’s at least a start! Someone who actually knows things about aircraft could probably have a field day standardizing and regularizing the set of stuff in the db.
That’s a very good point. I would say those tend to be placed more purposely as memorials; whereas actual aircraft are frequently placed just as generic examples without any particular dedication to a past event or individual. In other words, the replicas are not inherently historical, but instead are historic because of what they represent. As such this is may be a good case for considering them memorials. However, this may be splitting hairs a bit.
