How do we show what languages church services are given in? e.g. https://www.bankstownuca.com.au/ where they have different services in English, Filipino, Cook Island, Tongan & Arabic!
service_times:language=* would be for the service times with comments written in language, consistent with opening_hours:language=*, which is in use. For example, see this previous discussion. If you want to indicate which service is in which language, you currently have to use comments for that (which would get translated via that syntax). language:*=* would indicate whether services are available in a given language but not at which times.
Detailing religious services (other demographics and user groups)
At least the most numerous service_times:ru= all without comments are entirely bulk-added. It can be changed.
Ignoring the duplicate and already debated beforehand mass_times= , apparently there are a few to a dozen confession_times= , service_times:confession= , and confession_hours= , on top of confession= (somehow seemingly duplicating denomination= ?) for some meaning. This shows there’s some demand.
And that’s before considering the full variety of things that places of worship put on their service times signs. We had a lively discussion about that in Slack recently. Even just considering a few Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, and Baptist churches in the United States, we wound up scratching our heads about how we’d even attempt to model it.
So going on from that for Services in other languages, should it also then be service_times:en=* for the English speaking service, or would that just be service_times=*?
For maximum benefit, I would list all the available service times in parallel in service_times:en=*, service_times:ar=*, etc. One tag for each relevant language, with comments in that language about services in all the languages. In addition, I would add the full complement of language:*=yes tags, which are more likely to be parsed anyways.
The discussion on Slack quickly grew complicated because of a desire to make the comments machine-readable. It’s a laudable goal, but no one really has a full model of all the rites, liturgies, demographics, and settings that might cause a house of worship to split out another service and post the time on their sign. Let alone things other than communal worship, such as adoration, confession, study, or music practice.