I stumbled upon a shop that has a whatsapp channel for the shop.
I don’t think adding its URL to contact:whatsapp makes sense since it’s not a phone number, it’s more akin to an Instagram page (and in practice that’s where it’s currently tagged, but phone-report complains about it not being a phone number).
Looking at taginfo, I don’t see any key that is in used relating to whatsapp channel, so I suppose I have to make one up? I guess contact:whatsapp_channel makes the most sense.
Looking at the taginfo dump BD, there are a 38 whatsapp channels that are tagged in contact:whatsapp (SELECT key,value FROM tags WHERE key = ‘contact:whatsapp’ AND value LIKE ‘%0029%’;)
I agree that it doesn’t make sense to use the same contact:whatsapp tag as these are not phone numbers. I could find a few more channels tagged under contact:whatsapp here contact:whatsapp | Keys | OpenStreetMap Taginfo filtering by ‘channel’. One example value being used is contact:whatsapp=https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbC38zH11ulLmfQ57y2T . In accordance with other tags such as contact:instagram or contact:facebook, it would make sense to tag contact:whatsapp_channel with the full URL or just the unique code 0029VbC38zH11ulLmfQ57y2T.
Additional note, given its usage, contact:whatsapp really needs an english-language wiki page. I will create that in a moment.
Interesting, I had put in checks that should allow valid channel URLs to not be shown as errors. I wonder if you can let me know what the element is or what the URL is (by private message is fine if you prefer)
For me contact:whatsapp with the full URL is perfectly fine.
Keep in mind that since lately not only phone numbers are valid whatsapp contact details, but they also introduced named accounts.
Yeah it makes sense to relax and accept more than phone numbers now, but the issue I have with not having a dedicated key for channels is that some shops might have both a phone number for whatsapp and a channel.