Picnic table - why ask about bench?

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According to the wiki the tag:leisure=picnic_table “is a table with benches, ideal for food and rest.” and all the images shown on the page are tables with benches. Even so when editing a picnic table there is an additional setting “Used to indicate whether the feature has any benches or not”. Why this additional tag for bench if it is already part of the definition?

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link: Tag:leisure=picnic_table - OpenStreetMap Wiki

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leisure=picnic_table | Tags | OpenStreetMap Taginfo indicates that it is used in total 25 231 times with bench and 24 514 times with bench=yes

So there are around 700 with other bench values, almost certainly bench=no

overpass turbo finds 677 with bench=no

Is there a better tagging for them? Is picnic table without benches still picnic table? Maybe definition should be changed, maybe affected objects should be retagged

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With such a tiny percentage of bench=no it seems to me that most mappers agree on the definition of a picnic table (includes benches).

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IMO at that point it’s just a normal table :man_shrugging:

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There is a tag amenity=table that could perhaps be used for the 677. But again, according to the wiki “a default table has 4 seats”.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dtable

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or maybe people agree that it is for all picnic tables and picnic tables almost always have also benches, but nevertheless ones without them are also picnic tables…

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IMO at that point it’s just a normal table :man_shrugging:

maybe it has chairs instead of benches?

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One definition of a picnic table that I think aligns well with what at least people in the United States consider a picnic table to be is "a table that is designed for picnicking and that typically has adjacent or attached benches for sitting**. There can be smaller square or round tables with attached chairs that might superficially be considered picnic tables, but their really just outdoor or patio tables that happen to have seats. I don’t think anything outdoors with or without chairs and something to put food on top of is automatically a picnic table or that an outdoor table without a bench is a picnic table though. Sometimes it can just be a normal table with a seat.