The wiki description of barrier=swing_gate now only includes swing gates for vehicles. In fact, pedestrian access is even excluded. As a hiker, I encounter many more pedestrian swing gates than vehicle swing gates.
Poll: Should pedestrian swing gates be included in the description of barrier=swing_gate ?
For the no’s, I would like to know why not, and possibly an alternative tagging.
Is your interpretation that almost all barrier=gate are in fact swing gates or some other specific variety like lift gates?
I had understood it slightly differently - that swing gate in OSM is something more specific than “a gate with a swinging motion”. I see it as generally a stand-alone structure that covers enough of the width of a road to block vehicle access as the wiki says (or perhaps to block two-track vehicle access). Whereas the gate in your photo is part of a linear barrier (the fence) - to me it’s simply barrier=gate.
I think in English swing gate is not limited to swing gates for cars, it just says it swings around a vertical axis. I see no reason why OSM would limit this, and exclude all other swing gates.
Of course, pedestrian swing gates can be tagged barrier=gate, any gate can be tagged barrier=gate, but why not tag it as a swing gate if it is in fact generally called a swing gate?
PS would you call this car barrier (in a fence) a swing gate?
I take swing gate to mean what is currently pictured in the wiki. The picture you have put in the post is just a barrier=gate. The distinction is important as a pedestrian can usually easily get around a locked swing gate by ducking under the gate or often there is a way around the side, as swing gates usually are just to stop motor vehicle traffic.
It’s just a gate or pair of gates.
I honestly don’t know if I have ever used the term “swing gate” in normal English. A gate on a vertical hinge is so common I don’t think I have ever felt the need to call attention to its structure.
As I see it, barrier=swing_gate has a clear wiki description, consistent photos, and based on examples I have checked it is consistent with actual usage. That is reflected in the different icons used for gate and swing_gate used by many renderers.
As I often hike on tracks as well as paths, I come across both types quite often and feel the different icons are appropriate. I know that a swing_gate rarely blocks the way other than for some vehicles, while a gate often blocks the way for vehicles, people, and reasonably large animals.
If we used swing_gate for your examples the icons would no longer make sense, and I guess we’d end up with a single icon for all sorts of gates, making the map less informative.
I voted no for those reasons - I think it is a useful tag as it stands, and expanding it would make it so generic it would just merge with barrier=gate.
I voted no because a swing gate is a specific gate with a specific purpose, not just any gate that swings. In Norwegian, we call it a car barrier.
Unfortunately, the naming of things in OSM is sometimes very odd. I guess the same can be said of naming in general, but OSM contributors have a way of inventing new, odd ways, or referring to things in a very narrow context when the name itself is more generic.
Just had to look up barrier=turnstile in Wiki today (and it wasn’t an easy find if you don’t know the word).
I would argue that construction of the gate is a way less important information from the fact that it is… a gate. Therefore, a minor detail has been promoted as a value to a top-level tag, so data consumers have to handle them all. Wouldn’t it be nicer if instead of
barrier=swing_gate
barrier=turnstile
barrier=kissing_gate
barrier=lift_gate
(insert a dozen more possible values, some documented and some not)
we had just
barrier=gate
gate=swing / turnstile / kissing / lift /...
Well, that’s what you get when you have the database model designed from grounds up… 
I totally agree. barrier=gate & gate=… would have been better. Still, I would like a way to map pedestrian swing gates specifically. Using barrier=gate maps all kinds of gate indiscriminately, not a specific type.
I guess you could do barrier=gate + gate=pedestrian (+ bicycle=dismount 
).
If there already is a term that people use when discussing this particular type of gate, and it’s not “gate”, that’s probably a better candidate.
And based on natural language. I find it easy to see how this arises. If you pointed at any of the photos in this thread, in a non OSM context, and asked me “what is that?”, I would say “a gate”. If you did the same with a turnstile, I would say “a turnstile”. You would probably need to ask some detailed leading questions to get me to even use the word “gate”. So it doesn’t feel odd to me that they are different tags.
As for swing gates and lift gates as defined in OSM, I would probably just call them barriers, not gates. I don’t really have a single word to say what kind of barrier.
we could still have endless discussions what is a gate, e.g. is a turnstile a gate? A liftgate? A chain?
IMHO redefining these and similar tags for no apparent reason (current state seems to work and is consistently tagged, from what I experience) doesn’t make any sense.
what would that be, a pedestrian swing gate? Generally in OpenStreetMap, a swing gate let’s pedestrians pass at the side. If you want to express who can physically pass, width is a good indication, also foot=* access=* etc. can be used to further describe who can pass. The thing in your picture is IMHO not a swing gate but just a gate (that opens with a swing).
Well, a gate that opens with a swing is generally known as a swing gate. Swing gates for pedestrians are just about everywhere, and commonly available as ‘pedestrian swing gates’. I think OSM has, once again, used a generic term to indicate a more specific type, thereby excluding other specific types.
There is little support to adapt, so be it.
We may come up with a subtag to specify a gate as a pedestrian (swing) gate. We, that is interested mappers in the Dutch community. Currently, a suggestion is to add a note or a description with the word “klaphekje” in it, which is Dutch for small self-closing pedestrian swing gate, but I would prefer an English term, e.g. gate=self_closing_pedestrian_gate. Or use self_closing=yes, which could be used for other gate types as well.
PS My personal favourite gate type is the “Twents hek”, that is the traditional gate to meadows and farmland in the Twente region in Nederland, still to be found in many places.
In essence it’s a sizeable tree branch with one pivot point on top of a sturdy pole (or a tree stump), where the thick end serves as a counterweight for the longer and thinner end. The catch pole just holds the tip of the beam. Usually, before opening, a weight such as a sack of grain was hung on the thick end to ease the opening and swinging movement, and there was a second catch pole for the open position.
The big advantage of this type of gate was: All you needed was one thick iron pin for the pivot. The rest is wood, found in the vicinity. The pivot pole could be a conveniently placed tree stump, and the tip could rest against another tree, on a branch.
I often try to open these gates to test the balance, but most of the time I can’t lift it without my wife sitting.hanging on the thick end. Luckily, so far we haven’t been caught in the act.
IMHO, if you are interested in specific properties like self-closing, or number of hinges, or side of hinges, or no hinges but sliding guides, etc., the best at this point is likely not introducing a new top level barrier type but introduce a property or a subtype, according to the kind of property (e.g. personally, I’d make sliding vs. rotating a subtype, while self-closing or number of hinges would be a property).
In English English it’s generally known as a “gate”. “Swing gate” is normally reserved for use where the “swing” part is especially relevant, including the OSM example in the wiki.
It is almost never used for pedestrian gates even though they do swing too.
I believe you. Still, I find it all over the internet. E.g.
Residential properties use swing gates for driveway access, enhancing security and curb appeal.
Industrial facilities install swing gates to control access to restricted areas and ensure safety.
Public parks and recreational areas employ swing gates to manage pedestrian and vehicle entry.
I think it is used mostly by people selling gates (who also use weird formulations like “curb appeal”). Wikipedia doesn’t seem to use the term, even within the “gate” article, unlike e.g. turnstile and kissing gate.
The barrier types identified in OSM as “lift gate” and “swing gate” seem fairly close to what Wikipedia labels a “bar gate” - althoughI wouldn’t say that is widely used either. Maybe some variations of “bar gate” would have been very slightly better for these.
But it doesn’t seem to matter now, this was proposed and approved in 2012, and seems to have been interpreted consistently by mappers and renderers since then, which in the context of “problematically named tags in OSM” seems to place it at the very lowest end of the scale.
So be it. Since this means there continues to be no specific tagging for a (slef_closing) pedestrian swing gate, I think the note or description containing the Dutch word “klaphekje” will remain in use, which I think is the worst possible outcome. Then again, who cares?
I genuinely don’t see how one thing follows from another. Regardless of whether current tags are ideal or not, how do they prevent new tagging for “self closing pedestrian swing gate”?
To be clear, I was not in any way saying “the 2012 proposal determined everything about barrier tagging forever and no new tagging can be added”. I was just saying that the specific tags it proposed seem to have stood the test of time. Of course new tags could be added, just as that proposal itself added to an existing list.
You are free to use and/or propose a new tag for self closing if you would like
