How to consistently name sport (free-flying in particular) site?

Help and support
1

Hi,

I’d like to help make the information provided for free-flying sites a bit more consistent, especially the naming, to make it a bit easier to re-use. While the question is targeted at free-flying sites, I’m sure it could apply to other activities.

I’ve read Names - OpenStreetMap Wiki, especially the part about not including description in the name.

A takeoff site named Foo, maps and road sign would usually show “Foo Takeoff”, while users of the site will usually refer to the site as just “Foo”.

2

[splitting because of the link rule ;)]

Looking at different sites in OSM:

  1. Some just use “Foo” as name: Way: ‪Les richards‬ (‪1232268123‬) | OpenStreetMap
  2. Some use “Foo Takeoff” as name : Way: ‪Décollage Chalvet Ouest‬ (‪27001810‬) | OpenStreetMap
  3. Some use “Takeoff Foo” as name, and “Foo” as official_name: Way: ‪Décollage parapente de Courtet‬ (‪790740952‬) | OpenStreetMap
  4. Some go completely wild, mixing name, nickname, federation, etc: (can’t post the link)

So the question is, what would be preferred consistent way of naming the sites ? From the good practices guidelines, I’m tempted to think 1) but maybe it might be confusing on maps as sites are often named after local features (usually the nearest town or peak). So maybe 3) is more adequate ?

Note there is a tag available “free_flying:site” with value “takeoff” or “landing”

3

I’ve mapped in the area of 2 sites.

1 is named for the “Club” that operates it, while the other is “ Launch”!

I don’t think there are any hard & fast answers on that one?

4

Stumbled upon this one the other day while mapping something else…

Paragliding Landeplatz

Just name, no other tags… I wanted to fix it but had no idea how, so I left it alone.

Researching deeper now, Wiki has documented Tag:sport=free_flying, with a decent number of uses (~7000) and a lot of sub-tags of unknown provenance. It warns that

The sport=free_flying attribute should always be used in combination with another (physical) feature that describes the location, in this case as an area with leisure=pitch.

If you ask me, it’s a stretch to tag the whole random meadow normally used for pasture with leisure=pitch used for free flying, but then, there’s nothing obviously better under the leisure key. This is comparable to e.g. leisure=climbing, which indicates places popular/suitable for climbing, but not necessarily equipped with any infrastructure. Hence, a leisure=free_flying would seem best, but it only has 26 uses currently.

5

Some sites are dedicated to the activity, so makes sense to have them as ways, with proper boundary. For those, leisure=pitch and sport=free_flying makes sense to me.

For others, it is a bit more dodgy (there is a mix of node and ways for those) and could be seen as “just a pasture” where people happen to takeoff from time to time. I’m not sure if those should be mapped at all ? A meadow is not mapped as a football field just because kids tend to play around with a ball sometimes (I admit the comparison is a bit extreme)

The initial question about naming consistency was more about the first kind of site, where there is usually information on site, clearly showing that it is not just a pasture :slight_smile: