Recent discussion seems to suggest that multiple buildings sharing the same addr:*=* tags is completely acceptable. However, the Addresses - OpenStreetMap Wiki currently reads:
Usually, address information doesn’t need to be duplicated; i.e., there should be only one addr:housenumber=* per street and house number (which would typically be placed on the building). Software can typically link addresses to other features by geographical proximity, and duplicated addresses are often flagged as errors by quality assurance tools. However, there is still some debate on that point (see for example Address information in POI *and* building? on help.openstreetmap.org). Also, the community in some countries has established their own rules.
This would suggest that it’s not OK to duplicate addr:*=* tags. How would you map a cluster of houses like this in that case? If you put the address down as one node, it’d be in the middle of the foresty part, and thus stripping all of the buildings of their address information would be a bit silly anyway. Of course in real life these houses have their own unit letters, but that information is only surveyable from ground level, so it’s usually left out in Finland.
Should the Wiki be updated to state that adding identical address tags on multiple buildings is acceptable?
In such a case that’s acceptable, as those buildings in reality having a different address, just the addr:unit is missing at the moment. Though as long as there is a common feature, I’m not sure that’s a good idea, like think about a larger company containing multiple buildings. You rather want to have the addr:*=* not on each building but rather at the company-area and at the (main, delivery,…) entrance.
Overall, I rather think you might want to just change street and house number to street, house number and unit/flat.
If there’s no common feature other than the address/plot, is it still fine to duplicate? For example Mikołaja Kopernika 26 in Krakow has a bunch of different users, but there’s no specific unit numbers for any of them.
For Taavinsuo 11, how does the postal service know which unit (house, apartment, etc.) to deliver to? Does each one have its own number / letter / name?
They have letters that are assigned to each building by the housing cooperative. These are visible on the buildings, and usually on a map out front. There’s not public database recording these subdivision identifiers anywhere, so ground survey is the only realistic option for mapping them.
That seems to be all one building, with one main entrance. The address would seem to get a visitor close enough to their destination. With the example in Finland there are multiple buildings across the site - not fun to wander around in the snow / rain / dark trying to find a specific one.
That’s kind of what I wrote further above. You want to have the address on the main building only. You might want to duplicate the address to important entrances (like the once would be reasonable routing end points) or duplicate it to POI’s. Though I think you should not duplicate the address to any kind of secondary buildings on the same plot.
The Polish address has a big church, a library, and a university building all vying for that role There are certainly cases where you really can’t decide on a “main” building. Do you have an opinion on what should be done there?
As far as I can see all these buildings share the number 26 because they share the same main street entrance, while number 30 looks to be closely connected but has a different street entrance. It’s not clear to me there is any problem with tagging various buildings as number 26 here (although where I live the entrance itself would likely also have the tag). As these are named buildings/amenities, the name will disambiguate in many situations, and there seems no need to pick one as “main”. It seems not really different from the common practice of tagging shops and other POIs with an address.
Do you have an opinion on what should be done there?
To ask who is responsible for naming streets and giving addresses to name the streets in the middle and give numbers for the buildings. Everything else is probably suboptimal.
Not sure if possible in your country.
Yes, at the very least, it should hedge that the redundant tags are acceptable in some regions. In the U.S. community, we’re constantly having to reassure mappers that the JOSM warning about duplicate addresses is just a helpful reminder to double-check for typos, not a ban hammer about to come down on them for violating an artificial rule.
Ok, so let’s assume the wiki would say you should add it to every building to cover your edge-case. Would you add the address to the separate garage and the shed in the backyard of a residential house?
Whatever the wiki will say, you will still need to use common sense to understand the meaning behind those words and deal with (other) edge-cases.
I think this is handled more generally. It’s generally accepted in OSM that garages and sheds don’t need addresses. For example EveryDoor doesn’t ask surveyors to add address tags for a building=garage.
“The best thing about the hut at the bottom of George Bernard Shaw’s garden is the name. He called it ‘London’ so that his staff could legitimately say he’d ‘gone to London’ when he was hiding here, writing.”
Yes, with the caveat that building=* doesn’t always refer to current use. Many a garage in my area is home to a tech startup soon to catch the world by storm. (Or so we’re told.)
It might be useful to mention the concept of an outbuilding, as something that doesn’t need the usual identifying tags. Though it would be a pain to define outbuilding to anyone’s satisfaction, so we probably shouldn’t.
Do you mean a site relation, or a polygon around the address’ boundaries? The community has been very clear that it is not OK to map an address’ boundaries, since that’s analogous to mapping cadastral data.
There are certainly cases where you really can’t decide on a “main” building. Do you have an opinion on what should be done there?