I think amenity=X name=X is clearly poor/incorrect tagging and most of us would delete the name=X with much thought if we were tidying an area.
I’m sure you could create edge cases by mixing top-level tags, but I can’t see that anybody would mix, say, amenity=X, shop=Y since the rendering would conflict.
Are you also planning to perform this mechanical edit on other feature types besides amenity=toilets and leisure=playground? These two feature types are somewhat less likely to have names, but the names on other built and natural features may be more significant, especially in a historically multilingual region. I think it would be worth scrutinizing features such as this “Parque” park (which turned out to be a building), but I’m unsure if these cases would be more common than the cases where a feature was named generically in a different language just to sound more exotic, such as this “Callejón” (Spanish for highway=unclassified) in a region where Spanish is spoken but not predominantly.
military = bunker name matches one of [‘bunker’] x238 caseswaterway = waterfall name matches one of [‘waterfall’, ‘wodospad’] x101 casesnatural = spring name matches one of [‘źródło’, ‘spring’] x16 casesleisure = playground name matches one of [‘playground’, ‘plac zabaw’, ‘spielplatz’] x137 casestourism = camp_site name matches one of [‘camp site’, ‘campsite’, ‘pole namiotowe’] x61 casesman_made = cairn name matches one of [‘cairn’] x48 casesamenity = drinking_water name matches one of [‘drinking water’, ‘water refill station’, ‘woda pitna’] x205 casestourism = viewpoint name matches one of [‘viewpoint’, ‘punkt widokowy’] x293 caseslanduse = allotments name matches one of [‘ogródki działkowe’, ‘allotments’] x69 casestourism = picnic_site name matches one of [‘picnic site’, ‘picknickplatz’] x47 casesamenity = toilets name matches one of [‘toilets’, ‘toilet’, ‘WC’, ‘toalety’, ‘toaleta’] x822 casesamenity = bench name matches one of [‘bench’, ‘ławka’] x656 casesFollowing would benefit human review as map data is often very significantly broken in such areas, or I have not reviewed enough cases to be sure that change would be always good:
amenity = place_of_worship without religion tag, name matches one of [‘mosque’, ‘meczet’, ‘mezquita’, ‘mosquée’] - many casesbuilding = house name matches one of [‘residential building’] x91 casesbuilding = house name matches one of [‘residential’] x60 casesbuilding = house name matches one of [‘residencial’] x90 casesbuilding = residential name matches one of [‘residencial’] x36 casesservice = drive-through name matches one of [‘drive thru’, ‘Drive-Thru’, ‘Drive-thru’] x39 caseslanduse = farmland name matches one of [‘farmland’, ‘farm land’, ‘pole’, ‘pole uprawne’] x198 casesNote that name=WATERFALL name=Waterfall name=waterfall are all matched when name=waterfall is listed above.
Considering to propose one, this thread is done to check what is the opinion without spending time on documenting it. Also, to check whether remote edits like say removing name=Spring from springs in Nepal/USA/Poland are considered as safe.
Still, I would skip them in bot edit. I prefer to avoid any avoidable risk in bot edits and you have some truly weird taggings.
A specific name of “water refill station” could indicate a bottle or jug refill station, as opposed to a drinking fountain, which might be a user’s assumption in an urban context. I’d suggest examining these cases more closely or turning them into a MapRoulette challenge, since there’s a detailed tagging scheme for drinking water.
This is another one to be careful about. Mappers have often conflated vista points with their subjects, dual-tagging tourism=viewpoint with e.g. waterway=waterfall. The name=Waterfall on this node could help to decide whether the node physically represents the vista point or waterfall.
We often have highway signs posted to say “Scenic Lookout ahead”. They usually don’t have an actual name, it’s just a spot to stop the car & look at the nice view.
In English-speaking regions, I would expect that if these were legitimate name values, that they would also be tagged with note explaining the unusual situation. So if there’s a feature tagged with a descriptive name in this way and there’s no note, then I would 100% support a mechanical edit to remove the name.
I just want to add nothing constructive, other than to say that this is perhaps one of my favorite editing disputes of all time. It’s impossible to explain the dispute to anyone that isnt in the in-group of this community. I also love that eventually @Friendly_Ghost and @woodpeck met in person and the world didn’t explode. Over on Discord, we have a running joke over what Casper is going to do to earn the next block level.
The argument:“if there’s a plate or sign than that’s the name” is false imo.
I can put on a plate/sign also descriptions.
In fact colours are worldwide used for signs as descriptions.
Distances in Mi/Km are also descriptions and definitely on signs/plates.
Thus also the type of what I’m referring to isn’t necessarily a “name”
thus if written on a sign in a park the wording “Public Toilet 150m left” doesn’t mean the name of that sign is “Public Toilet 150m left” it still means that sign has no name. It’s just information, that’s it.
Same for a sign on a door for “Male” or “Female” it doesn’t mean that this door has the name “Male” or “Female” nor does it mean that room has the name “Male/Female” it’s just a description.
“Wash hands for 30 seconds” at the Faucet also doesn’t mean the faucet has the name “Wash hands for 30 seconds”
it’s a description.
As such, I deem a description like “Toilet” or “Public Toilet” also a description and not a name.
That’s my 5-cents to this discussion.
We have discussed label= for =route Proposal: Use description instead of name for route relations eg https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Nadjita/Routes#New_tag_label=*
A greater question may be whether building=toilets or indoor=room + room=toilets with name=Toilet is valid. amenity=toilets is often combined with them, thereby causing the possible appearance of amenity=toilets + name=Toilet ?
For this, I’m thinking a toilet stall should generally be indoor=area not =room ? It’s usually a partition, not “room”. Key:room - OpenStreetMap Wiki
Ah, but the question is not "is it a true name? ", but “could it be a true name?”.
For toilets we can be reasonably sure, I guess, but for highways I think not.
The original question is if a description is theoretically a name.
If a description on a sign or plate says: toilet, or male, or female, or left, or right, or 200m, or 100m, or prohibited, or authorized only, etc etc can that theoretically be a name.
In my dictionary a description but also the consensus on OSM a description is not a name.
That’s all I’ll say to it and leave it at that.
Can a string that looks like a description in fact be a name? The general answer to this is Yes. With roads, paths and trails many examples can be found. To me that means I should not perform an automated edit to clean out names that look like a description.
Even with playgrounds: a playground can be named The Playground. It’s not that uncommon to turn a description into a name.
I 100% agree with you on that last example. But that’s not being discussed here. You seem to forget the question. Altering the question into new questions and new situations isn’t helpful.
Can “Toilet” as a name be valid.
No it can’t, if someone would give it a name, I would indeed be “The Toilet” and not just “Toilet”
if it’s just on a plate and it’s just “toilet” or "public toilets’ it’s definitely not a name.
I’ve seen thousands of toilets worldwide in the over 60 countries I’ve visited and I never seen anyone writing a description “toilet” on a plate with the purpose of naming the facility as “toilet”
Honestly in all my travels never seen it. I also never seen anyone naming a playground as “playground”
IF - and this I’ve seen sometimes worldwide - people tend to give something a name identical to the feature description it always reads “The xxxxxxx”
I deem “Toilet” or “right” or “left” or “ahead” or “200m” or “10 miles” or “playground” etc not names but descriptions.
but “The Toilet” or “The 10 Miles” or “The Playground” etc sure those could be names… that’s a possibility then.
This is my experience in over 60 countries worldwide I’ve visited.
But then again - exceptions confirm the rule.
This is fair, but note that many languages don’t rely on definite articles like this. In Vietnamese, an intentionally generic name would be formed by omitting an article, forming the same exact string as the preset name. For example, bưu điện refers to post offices in general, cái bưu điện emphasizes that a single post office is meant, and Bưu điện would be the name of a post office if it didn’t have another name. But this is fairly contrived; I don’t think there’s as much of an attachment to such names in Vietnamese.
here in spain, our tobacco monopoly Tabacos would be brand=tabacos, not name=tabacos
it does become complicated to use the brand tags in the minority language regions, though, because the catalan brand tabacs is the same state company
No they don’t. They invalidate the rule.
We can either continue to split hairs forever, or we can run this bot edit to remove all the descriptive name tags and accept the tragedy that this will include the name “Toilet” that Peter demonstratively painted on the door of a toilet near him.
I was reviewing the situation and it appears that oversized part of such descriptive names comes from OsmAnd edits (oversized compared to overall editing volume)
I reviewed their interface and opened Focus on feature type, not on POI name in editing plugin to reduce how often people editing with OsmAnd add descriptive names · Issue #18651 · osmandapp/OsmAnd · GitHub