tagging for shops selling number/licence plates for motor vehicles

schoschi · 2019-10-09T21:37:49.000Z

Dear all,

bold parts shall make the core information easier to grasp, i.e. are not yelling

When I wanted to map a shop selling number plates for motor vehicles, I found no clearly agreed/voted/official tag value in the wiki and no discussion in the forum. Using taginfo, I discovered different wordings and each in multiple spellings - and consolidated them by choosing the most often used wording matching the “space replaced by underscore” spelling pattern, which was shop=license_plates. This changeset triggered a discussion - hence creating this forum post where discussion features are more powerful than in the changeset.

Do you know an agreed tagging scheme for those shops? If not, we shall decide: Is it a shop or a craft? Often but not always, plates are produced (speaking for craft) in the same place where they are sold alongside with related goods like vehicle spare parts, trophies,… or services like insurance, logistics, doing the administraive registration process,… (speaking for shop or even office).

**If it’s key craft, is value signmaker appropriate?
**

**If it’s key office, I did not find any appropriate value.
**

**If it’s key sho, which value is appropriate? **

For 3, I collected some values

trophy
Pro: trophy shops usually do engravings, signs etc - so the more general concept of a number plate.
Con: Just a fraction of trophy shops do sell number plates. A relevant share of shops selling number plates do not do any other kind of engravings, signs etc., i.e. the value will cause misleading associatons at user’s side.
car_parts
Pro: A number plate is an accessory for a vehicle.
Con: Just a fraction of car part shops do sell number plates. Many shops selling number plates do not sell any other car_parts (misleading associatons). car_parts is already specialized e.g. into tyres and trailer - so why shall “number plate” not get it’s own specialized shop value?
number_plate or otherwise worded/spelled, dedicated value which is not yet “official” / agreed upon.
Pro: Such a distinctive tagging allows users to tell apart shops selling number plates from other shops not selling them, i.e. avoids false positives in search results. This is desirable as you can’t go to an abitrary shop offering engravings/signs/spare parts/trophies/*, because in several legislations, number plate dealers need to be authorized and possess dedicated equipment (number plates have detailed requirements as per law).
Relevance: As a relative proportion, I assume these shops are not less frequent than e.g. frame or model shops which have a value on their own. In absolute numbers, I’d expect 1000-2000 number plate shops alone in Germany: 2-10 of them next to each governmental office for car registration and few more e.g. in areas with many car dealers. AFAIK we have mostly one office per “region” (i.e. 1st part of the license plate) with few exceptions, e.g. 2 offices in Berlin. Hence we’ve roughly 300-350 offices for the 316 “regions” (see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Kfz-Kennzeichen_in_Deutschland#Statistik)).
Con: Effort for another “official” value.

In case 3c is agreed on, we must define the wording + spelling. According to discussion in the changeset and to translators + dictionaries like dict.cc, “license plate” and “license tag” are American English while both "licence plate " and “numberplate” / “number plate” are British English, furthermore we’ve “car tag”. Which of those wordings? Which of the spellings (with or without space)? Singular or plural?

I’m looking forward to your suggestions Personally, I favor 2 and 3c but I don’t have a preference between those two.

Greetings from rainy Freiburg, Georg

R0bst3r · 2019-10-10T06:42:21.000Z

See https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=765251#p765251e

JochenOSM · 2019-10-10T15:22:27.000Z

Hi Georg,

I’d prefer shop=number_plate.

craft= seems not appropriate to me since the production of a plate is fully done by a machine within a minute (like amenity=vending_machine, vending=elongated_coins) and one does not need much knowledge or time to produce one.

office= seems not appropriate to me since I want to buy a thing and not a service.

shop=trophy or shop=car_parts would mix different things in my opinion. For me a number plate is not an accessory for a vehicle but a requirement. That’s why one would find an place to buy number plates next to every governmental office for car registration (at least in Germany). If at this place other things are sold too than to me that looks like a little post office in a bakery shop - same place same person but two different functions.

“number_plate” is singular, BE, and shorter than “vehicle_registration_plate” which would be my second choice.

JochenOSM · 2019-11-19T20:24:57.000Z

Unfortunately there are not many replies yet…
@schoschi what do you think about shop=number_plate?

Just for reference, the previous values before your edit had been

10x car_licence_plate
 1x car_licence_plates
 1x licence_plate
 8x license_plate
 1x licenseplate
21x number_plate
 1x numberplates
 2x plate
 1x registration_plate
 2x registration_plates

and 19x license_plates (unchanged).

goedegazelle · 2019-11-19T21:28:36.000Z

I also prefer shop=number_plate. (I had already written this under the change set.)

JochenOSM · 2019-12-27T15:45:03.000Z

Reverted in change 78932248: There is still (11 weeks later) no consensus about harmonizing these values at all, and the original poster did not reply any more.