It’s worth pointing out that that’s a very prescriptive view.
A lot of objects - the majority, in some areas - with tourism=attraction have name, and may have tags like address, operator, website or fee without any other tag that says what they are, such as building, man_made, historic, highway or amenity.
Some of them are purpose-built tourist “experiences”. Some are physical objects that we have a more specific tag for. Sometimes the tag seems to have been used like place=locality… (not saying that’s a good thing)
This is something we have been confronted to in the French outdoors community: add tags to describe fountains and mountain huts, or rely on an external reference that will do it better than us? The balance may be hard to find, but we need to draw a line between map data and encyclopedic data…
I know that it is common way of mapping, but I think that we can agree on that it would be preferable to add missing info?
In the same way as mapping just shop=yes without specifying shop type, its name or opening hours.
Or mapping just shop=convenience without specifying shop name or its opening hours.
In my experience term “tourism attraction” is used for basically anything that can conceivably attract anyone who can act as source of money for local business, and for even more minor stuff.
history of object, including info who organised rebuild of alpine hut after it was burned down during WW II? Or which military unit burned it down? Definitely not in OSM.
Hiking and other outdoors activities are considered part of tourism by official authorities in my country and I guess other countries. This has led us to interacting with so-called “tourism information systems”, in addition to wikidata and specialised sites such as refuges.info. As a result, my perception is that we definitely are not acting in a void, and that there is even some pressure building up on the other side of the boundary to push it towards a “core business” of OSM that would be more specialised in geometries.
Even the reuse of “our” (hiking, cycling) routes is not guaranteed, currently professionals only use OSM as a background layer and rebuild their own (bad) geometries to add them to their databases. Convincing them to reuse OSM routes is difficult, and it won’t be easier if OSM is perceived as a competitor. If we try to bite off more than we can chew, we might end up being the losing side of a competition between specialized commons and a generic one that dabbles in everything.
if they are using OSM path/road data to modify own route data, then there are already using OSM data (and - from my understanding - are triggering share-alike provisions of ODBL and are obligated to publish produced work as ODBL)
For sure, even though it serves as this in some cases. In general that tag just describes, that people might want to see it, aka they might get attracted by it. But humans are pretty divers. Not sure, OSM is the best place to give a ranking or classifying tourist attraction. Sure we can add other rankings, like we do for hotels, where we add the stars.
There are other services out there ranking tourist attractions.
That is indeed a possible angle to try and seduce them into using OSM more. Or not.
Edit: maybe I was unclear. They have their own (bad) geographical data produced by their own means, they have their (best available) tourism data, and they display them on top of an OSM background
Edit: actually the question is elsewhere: even a ODbL tourism commons could be a competitor to OSM, with better tourism data.
I fully agree to that and have done so in some cases, replacing a standalone “attraction” tag by a “man_made” or “historic” tag.
Anyhow in case of specially the small “pass-by-objects” being the issue here the predominant purpose is being an object for tourists and not much more. Like the xylophone example in the OP - of course one could tag that as a man_made object or else but the main purpose of this thing is being there to entertain tourists (in this case hikers, specially families with children) passing by. I could imagine using tourism=entertainment instead of “attraction” for such object, would be a better choice imho.
And yes, generally “tourism=attraction” is a poor tag, and it would not become better by splitting it up into 2 poor tags.
I feel like you are making odd correlation between the object and its intricate importance. Your example of xylophone tries to apply meaning to an instrument designed for children. Someone added it to OSM for some unknown reason. The map is slight more complete and there is one more searchable piece of data. You can draw your own conclusions on the object’s value.
OSM focuses on intrinsic facts about or related to an object. Even places to find more information. Everything else is too subjective to record. In this we let the individual tourist or thier guide decide what they think is worth seeing.
No, I am not talking about the correlation of an object and its importance, I am talking about the character of an object. If there is a public piano placed somewhere for bypassers to play if they like the predominant character of the object is being a music instrument and I would tag it as such.
In case of the log xylophone placed in the wood the predominant character is to entertain bypassers, specially children so I think it makes sense to tag it as such.
The same applies to a stand, where a certain fairy tale can be narrated, supported by some key words and pictures displayed on a rotatable wooden cylinder. I’d say such objects can best be tagged as tourism=entertainment + desription of what it is.
What are the objective signs that we can use if they are available to us?
the physical existence of the object
its popularity
the effort that someone is spending to make it popular.
In that, this is very similar to the situation for hiking, riding and bicycle routes: 1 is the trailblazing, 2 is currently difficult to obtain except for objects such as the Eiffel Tower, 3 led us to accepting only routes that are published by an official body (or endorsed by it). Then, attributes such as difficulty can be either observed in an objective way or taken at face value from the official body in question.
Not sure why its purpose matters whether it is for entertaining or a religious object. The tourism tag is for object that were for the use of tourists. Things like hotels, motels and other have the tourism tag because they are expressly built for the use by tourist. They are forms of lodging created primarily for use by people as a place to live while visiting the area.
A “story wheel” is just that.There is no such requirement that the operator be from outside the immediate area. The only requirement that can be assumed are the operator is able to observe the images drawnon the wheel. It could have been created to attract tourists. We have no way of determining that intent without some additional research. Even with it, we should only be tagging it’s properties. Though including a link to articles or Wikipedia pages about the object.
At the end of the day none of tags will include tourism because the object doesnt stop functioning if tourists don’t use it. Unlike a hotel, where a lack of paying tourists will turn it into an ordinary apartment building.
I have no idea. We are supposed to be basing tags on “ground truth”. Last I checked national pride or religious obligations will never be valid tags.
There are just too many subjective reasons why one group of people might value a particular POI over another. Trying to figure it out would probably just start a bunch of arguments. Resulting in a bunch of bruised egos and getting no closer to consensus.
For reference , I would like to mention there is importance= , one being =local . In the case of stations and airports, I don’t like its use of =international , rather preferring it separated to have =intercontinental and =continental suggested in User:Rurseekatze/Station Importance Draft - OpenStreetMap Wiki , and Proposal:Aerodrome - OpenStreetMap Wiki for flights_range= alternatively. Of course they are more verifiable than tourist interest, but =international would also be more applicable to the other end of popularity in tourism= , if not eg =worldwide .
Not concluding whether this should be done. Only some possible solutions.
Also I prefer the overloaded tourism=yes when it is already another feature. Want to avoid overusing =attraction .
The tourism tag is for object that were for the use of tourists. Things like hotels, motels and other have the tourism tag because they are expressly built for the use by tourist.
this is part of it, but the tourism tag is also used for other things, e.g. tourism=artwork. Art is quite unrelated to tourism, it seems arbitrary to have it tagged under “tourism”. Or tourism=attraction, these are either set up for tourists, or are things that have become an attraction but have not been designed for tourists.
Viewpoints, museums, galleries are other features which are not specifically designed for tourists.
