[RFC] Tag "position" as human readable information of a location e.g. for guidepost

General talk Tagging general discussion
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Proposal: The key position shall be used to identify the location of an object in human readable form.

Problem statement: Routing may give a series of locations to visit as a series of node numbers to visit in node network. In networks that are based on guideposts (see basic network) such information as the node number is not available. The results of Nomatim do not always give meaningful or even misleading information esp. in cases of guideposts located outside of settlements or in larger admin areas. Hence a series of locations may give the user information about the course to follow. And to identify the positions of the guideposts on a map or give a user with some local knowledge information of villages or districts on the route.

Alternatives considered:

The tag:Location is used for the location of an object relative to the surface and it might be confusing to use it together wird a qualifier :human for the above mentioned purpose.

The tag:name should reflect information that may be found on the object. But this is not given for guideposts.

The tag:ref should also reflect information found on the object as for name. And a series of ref numbers would not help to image the route. This holds for a series of node numbers but these are rendered on maps as they are short whereas refs given by the operator may be inconsistent among guideposts of different operators and also lengthy.

Hence, a new tag is proposed. The tag may be amended by language specific keys like :de for text in German.

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What kind of values would be used? Perhaps some examples would help.

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I am not sure I understand your idea, but I have two established osm tags which maybe help:

There is Key:defibrillator:location - OpenStreetMap Wiki for human readable text about the location of defibrillators.

There is Key:destination - OpenStreetMap Wiki to tag the contents of a guidepost on the way.

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Key:destination is for the locations that the guidepost is pointing to.

Using key:guidepost:location may be a good (if not not better) alternative to position.

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Consider this overpass query: overpass turbo . I would use positions like:

Gothendorf, Zur Schwartau ( Node: 11132677560 | OpenStreetMap ) as there are two guideposts in Gothendorf

For smaller cities (e.g. Bad Schwartau) the name of the city combined with the name of a POI or street may be used:

For bigger cities (e.g. LĂĽbeck) names of districts combined with the name of streets (for short streets) or crossing of streets or POIs may be used:

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Ok. I still don’t understand why you need it but I think I understand what you want.

I would not map that and I recommend you to not map it. My reasons are:

  • It is not verifiable on the ground
  • Its value would have to change if another guidepost would be installed in the same village

By the way: In Vorarlberg, Austria, guideposts have names, example: Node: ‪Lesegatter‬ (‪5851724234‬) | OpenStreetMap

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defibrillator:location= is an overuse and redefinition of location=
It’s basically a *:description= , most similar to addr:full=
Should use is_in:*= (often misunderstood to be deprecated in all situations) / object:*= (meaningless naming, and was bulk-added)
Then neccessary levels might be added: *:hamlet= , *:village= , *:city= , *:suburb= , *:street= (without resorting to freeform addr:full= )
But there’s no demonstrated need in this. Apps could label them with the closest most relevant locations automatically. If you find Nominatim bad, you should ask to improve that, however this is not its purpose.

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