I tried discussing it at Changeset: 158333852 | OpenStreetMap
I think that this kind of data should be removed and does not belong in OSM, at least for private houses. For shops/etc I am still dubious, but for private residences I think it definitely should be removed and not mapped.
I want to ask here before doing reverts.
Apart from the fact that this is kind of weird in terms of data protection, i think the structure of the residents will change constantly.
And even if no really personal data is involved, I find it extremely worrying if you can search for where little boys or elderly people live
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In the EU this would definitely not be legal, but I donāt know about Nigeriaās personal data protection laws. The added data look like an import from another data source that may be public or not. I wonder why they are tagged on separate building nodes that donāt appear to coincide with already mapped building areas.
Maybe I am totally wrong, but anywayā¦
My first thought was: No, definitevly no for such information.
Then I read the changeset discussion. It did not really change my thoughts as I could not really read an answer to the question why.
Next I had a look at the list of the users changesets, well this made me rethink my thoughts.
It is a quite active mapper mapping a lot with the remark of a hotosm-project, this made me think about:
What is this area alike, who lives there?
Are these people in need of help from charity organisations?
Does this (for us) unnessecary and critical information help to direct aid to the right places?
Maybe, I donāt know. Only the mapper can give us the answer.
But I am still not sure that a public map is the right place to store this information, maybe it is the easiest and fastest way and the risk of misuse is not too big.
I think that even if someone is in need of aid and/or their country doesnāt afford them the right, protecting their privacy to a level that we have come to expect as standard in the EU is the respectful thing to do.
There has been at least one instance in the past where, in the course of a humanitarian project, the number of people of various age groups and genders, as well as the number of cattle, belonging to households were recorded. IIRC we removed that information, though I donāt remember the details.
Absolutely agree. A boys-only school, sure, mark it as such (though thatās done with school:gender). But not for private residences.
Agreed with the removal approach taken here too - this data is something a project should store in their secured database, not in OSM.
I think this probably requires a redact rather than just a revert too - otherwise it remains in the history of the object.
Think this might better be redacted since the information would still be there when just deleted.
TBH I looked at the linked changeset and I absolutely do not understand what made you worry. Would you mind to add more details about your concerns?
It does NOT seem to be recording āwho lives in the houseā. It does NOT say āthere are girls living in this houseā. The tag says users_* and the values chosen by this mapper seem to be relevant to it.
Examples:
yes, see Node: 12287965023 | OpenStreetMap or Node: 12287965026 | OpenStreetMap or any other residential building touched by this changeSo while I might not see the value in adding this information, or there might be other tags to indicate āadults onlyā (in general meaning) places, I do not see issues with the given mapper and changeset. Neither I see āprivacy concernsā, what are you even talking about??? They tag ATYL.
What makes me worry more is more general mapping practices:
Iād really say itās better to put some of your efforts into educating them about common community standards rather than seeing non-existing āprivacy concernsā.
who would be āuserā of a house if not its residents?
People who can / are able / to āuseā object (in general, not right now at this moment of time). To live in this house in this case. This might sound vague, but if you look into the tagging for this āsecreteriatā (which cannot be āusedā by children) then it becomes way more clear.
Think of it similarly to male/female tagging for toilets (established practice in OSM).
(of course Iām not this mapper and I have no idea whether my guess is right, but I trust my intuition here)
then I am confused by
?
In case of Node History: 12287965029 | OpenStreetMap and similar it records who lives at given house. Note that I am not proposing/requesting to purge all users_girl etc. but only where tagged on houses.
Feel the difference:
Like toilets. Theyāre male by designation (and thatās what OSM tags), but at any given point of time there might be a girl in menās restroom (and thatās OSM does NOT tag)
Has anyone contacted the local community?
There is no separate Nigerian community so far but Mateusz has already invited the mapper to take part in the discussion here.
As far as I understand, there are some people in this place trying to do some organized mapping and the target is not to add private data of people living in the houses there. Anyhow also to me it is absolutely unclear what these data shall be used for.
I just repeated the invitation to explain what they are doing in the CS comment.
So what makes you think itās the first point? How to judge, whether a girl can live in a house. Like how would a house look like with users_girl=no?
So quite obvious itās the second point.
Because I can look at the changes linked and naturally all residential houses have all users_* as yes. If this would be to say who lives there, it wonāt be āuserā in the first place and it would be more diverse in the second place. But today itās opposite.
As mentioned above, some official public building which is supposed to be used by adults Node: 12287965014 | OpenStreetMap. It has users_boy=no and users_girl=no which I obviously (same āobviouslyā as you said) read as ānot for childrenā.
And for me itās quite obviously the first. We can have different opinions, thatās why the topic was raised. And without the original mapper actually explaining it we can only guess indeed.
Ah I do see what you mean. If indeed this trying to convey who could live at the house rather than who does live at the house then itās probably not such a big privacy issue.
However, if that is the case, then
So Iād still suggest this is deleted but simply because I donāt think it adds any value. But certainly less of an issue.
Should definitely be documented if it is going to be used though.
Butā¦ everybody ācouldā live in each house. If thats the case, its a useless information. If its āwho lives in the houseā its raising questions how this data gets evaluated.
Is someone standing there and observing people entering and exiting? How do they determine if they are just visitors?
All in all this is highly questionable in my opinion and should not be in the OSM-Database and should be redacted.
Additionally keys like Key:status - OpenStreetMap Wiki should not be used and buildings should be added as well 
Is it possible that there is a āprofessionalā misunderstanding and that the contributor is trying to map statistical data that would better be in umap rather than in OSM, independently of privacy issues? Sometimes professionals of a given domain tend to overestimate the public value of their dataā¦
I agree with @okainov.
If you look at the data - how the tags have actually been used in this area - you can see that the tag users_female= has been added to hundreds of buildings and POIs, mostly POIs that provide some form of service to the public (pharmacies, water pointsā¦) and the only ones that have users_female=no are a barber, a tailor, a few hairdressers, and a car repair shop (!)
It looks like the mapper just needs to be educated how to correctly tag things in OSM (e.g. male= and female= for hairdressers) and what not to tag at all.