Proposal:Auctioneer
| Auction Houses | |
|---|---|
| Proposal status: | Abandoned (inactive) |
| Proposed by: | D4RK-L3G10N |
| Tagging: | office=auctioneer |
| Applies to: |  ,  , 
|
| Definition: | To tag auction offices, yards, etc. |
| Statistics: |
|
| Rendered as: | A small gavel superimposed on a $ |
| Draft started: | 2012-04-30 |
| RFC start: | 2012-05-03 |
I wish to highlight I took the precautions mentioned at Creating_a_proposal, such as checking whether any other tag already exists with a similar name or another way of calling it, checking whether other proposals have been done, etc. and despite a thorough research which I describe below, I didn't find anything. If there actually is something please mention it. This page is also wikified.
Proposal
It should be used to tag offices whose primary activity is to auction things, may they be houses, cars, furniture, antiques, etc.
Rationale
Auctioneers are widespread worldwide, selling things for the highest bidder and it's a common commercial activity. It may be usually tagged only as a small office building, but in some cases, especially car auctioneers have large lots where they keep their cars parked until the auction, which was the case that brought me bring forth this proposal. Other auctioneers may have large warehouses for retail goods. Please see the Wikipedia article on the subject for more info.
Examples
I believe the most famous is Sotheby's. I guess there's at least one auction house per city, considering that in most countries belongings of an insolvent debtor may be auctioned to pay the debt. That means these auctions may be performed by private companies which have offices. There are at least some auctioneers in big cities, especially big ones which auction cars.
Similar tags
I thought that maybe similar tags could be in use, but I couldn't really think of any other way to tag an auctioneer besides by more blanket terms, such as office=company. I thought maybe a distant candidate could be shop=pawnbroker, but I assume only someone quite oblivious of what an auctioneer does would wish to tag it this way.
I also noticed there is an array of different terminologies mentioned at the Wikipedia article. I searched the ones I thought most relevant (bidding, escrow, hammer price), but nothing showed up.
I noticed there is a reference for an 'auction house' on the Philippine wiki about map features, but no tag was mentioned.
Tagging
Auctioneers are not as commonplace as a stationery obviously, that's why I believe it shouldn't be tagged as amenity=* but considering the other tags that have been approved for office=*, such as office=employment_agency and office=accountant, it sounds like it could be added to it.
I think office=auctioneer is better than office=auction or any other variant such as auction house/yard, since it appears to be the standard to use the name of the profession and not of the type (i.e. 'accountant' instead of 'accounting').
Also I believe using any other key such as amenity=* and shop=* wouldn't be as appropriate as office=* for their own reasons.
Applies to
for fast tagging, when delimiting the terrain of the office, I guess when in that terrain there are described additional features, nonetheless belonging to the auction house, thus needing a relation to demonstrate the link between those features.
Unofficial usage (TagInfo)
A search for the value 'auction' at Taginfo reveals there is already some unofficial usage for auction, especially as shop=auction_house (11), shop=auction (6), amenity=auction_house (4) and designation=livestock_auction (2). For the key office=*, there are 2 hits and there is also 1 hit for leisure=auction_house.
Indeed usage isn't massive, but maybe once the tag is approved, and a wiki page is created for it and added and so forth it would increase. Nonetheless I believe an auctioneer is unique enough to deserve its own category.
Rendering
A search on Google for auction icons shows 2 types of icons are mostly used to describe an auctioneer, which is: a) a gavel superimposed upon a dollar sign ($) or b) a hand holding a sign on which 'BID' is written onto. I believe both images would be appropriate to describe this feature. Unfortunately I'm not handy with drawing, else I'd have something to show you guys.
Features/pages affected
It's a value for office=*.
Comments
Please preferably comment on the talk page.
Voting
To start at soonest in 2 weeks, according to the instructions contained at Proposed_features#Voting, which would be 2012-05-17 (May 17, 2012).