Office=lost_property vs amenity=lost_property_office - merge?

General talk Tagging general discussion
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There are two tags for the same thing

In the forum i could find one old thread from 2017 Wie ist ein Fundbüro einzutragen? with the conclusion that office=lost_property is preferred.
Not lost_and_found because that’s american english and OSM uses british english (should be clarified on the wiki-page as its already on the amenity one).

The question is: which one should be used?

  • office=lost_property is used 78 times and
  • amenity=lost_property_office 146 times.

While amenity kinda sounds unusual to me, i think it tracks with Key:amenity - OpenStreetMap Wiki that states:

amenity=* is the top-level tag describing useful and important facilities for visitors and residents, such as toilets, telephones, banks, pharmacies, prisons and schools.

If we can reach a decision here, i’d be happy to update the wiki and unify the tagging.

What do you think?

ps: I will add a link to the discussion on both sites.

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I prefer office= , not only for the reason of off-loading amenity= . These are more “offices” for specialized tasks, that you should enquire and even make an appointment in advance, not really randomly visit in your daily life.
However, there could be a distinction between office= and amenity= ideally, where office= is centralized after some days, and amenity= is on-site held immediately for a short time. Another issue is lost & found being located in other features especially on-site, but can also be worse as I have noticed centralized lost & found being combined with special ticket offices or other facilities. Both aspects can be compared with office=security vs amenity=security , and interrelated for the usual provision of such service there. Proposal:Security guard - OpenStreetMap Wiki

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Thanks for your answer :slight_smile:
I don’t think there is any reason to “off-load” any tag. If there are a lot amenities, there are. If there are a lot of offices, there are.

In my city i know two lost property facilities and in both you can just drop in. One from the city itself, the second from public transport. No need to make an appointment.

As centralized - do i understand correct: You mean there is one location that is responsible for visitor-communication and short-stored stuff and after X days the stuff gets moved to a warehouse, for example? But, does the warehouse even need a dedicated tagging?

For me it would even be public service as seen Key:amenity - OpenStreetMap Wiki here.

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office= schema in general has a bigger problem of not distinguishing clearly of cases where

  • anyone can walk in (like into shop)
  • ones where you need appointment (lawyers?)
  • completely internal ones (tax office audit)

so I would prefer amenity

why it would be needed/desirable/useful/relevant?

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You might find some pointers at the Gare du Nord, Paris mapping Lost and Found Train station Gare du Nord Paris | Report a lost item . Vaguely remembering discussing the internal routing/entrance there following some QA flag.

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If you search taginfo for lost property, there are also a bunch of single value names containing “lost property” that could probably benefit from a proper tag saying what they are beyond just the name.

With regard to function I suspect that of the 200-odd mapped so far some you have to make an appointment to visit many you don’t, and I doubt whether the current amenity/office aplit in OSM reflecta that - I don’t believe that information would be lost (in the UK at least) if these were merged.

The usual caveat applies - it would make sense to let any advertised data consumers of either know about this topic before proceeding with anything.

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Both, actually. There can be dedicated on-site lost property desks at larger stations. Smaller stations could also be concentrated at specific large stations in the process. Then both are centralized to a system-wide center. Finally, they might be sent to warehouses first.
The bloating of amenity= may be a more fundamental debate. In practice, amenity= would be more likely to conflict with other amenity= when located in the same facility, so the question of creating separate features for perhaps the same desk needs to be considered.

Format-wise, =lost_property_office seems more verbose amenity=lost_property | Tags | OpenStreetMap Taginfo
Similar to =luggage_storage , there could be different forms of lost property, that amenity=lost_property could handle. This should be considered, as both can be used, depending on timeframe, or whether it’s valuables. amenity=lost_property_box | Tags | OpenStreetMap Taginfo

For their ultimate stop, should police lost property offices, where they all end up in after being unclaimed till the end, use =lost_property / =lost_property_office as well?

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I gave this a look a bit back and ended with the amenity variant, see Add amenity=lost_property_office · simonpoole/beautified-JOSM-preset@ca1c97a · GitHub (added because it is clearly something that is useful to tag even though currently too low use for inclusion).

Just because in everyday use the name we give a thing has ‘office’ in it, doesn’t mean that it fits in the office category in OSM. And this isn’t the only case that should be ‘unloaded’ from the office category.

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What do you mean with that? Contact them and tell them I’m planning to change this? Where can i see a list of advertised data consumers?

Until then simply the amenity=* should be used. I don’t think the warehouse should be tagged with that tag, unless its possible to go there and get stuff back, of course.

I disagree. ; should be used then. And its possible to add a second POI as well.

This is something i could get behind. It could be further clarified then with lost_property=office or lost_property=storage, for example. But questionable if the storage needs to be tagged at all.

So, from what i can see, most seem to disagree with me, that i can (should?) point the office-wiki to the amenity and maybe expand the amenity one a bit with some explanations.
But i should contact advertised data consumers beforehand (but i don’t know who or how yet :D)

Thanks already for the discussion.

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on taginfo, in projects tab

you can look at some popular tags where something is actually listed (say railway=station)

if we have small “lost and found” in larger facility I would not tag both at the same object

if we have two things in one area then I also would tag them as a separate objects

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So, i checked

So should talk with… SimonPoole and inform him about this discussion? :smiley:

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Pretty much.

For completeness, I’m only in that list because of this discussion - I didn’t check those values before!