Proposal talk:Key:branch
Could you please include in your rationale why the name=* tag is not a good place for the branch name? You mention 'inconsistencies', but don't explain them any further. How would you differentiate between a 'name' and a 'branch name'? Is everything with an operator tag eligible to an branch= instead of a name= ? --Chaos99 12:04, 13 September 2012 (BST)
- Key:brand has nice examples of how name=, operator= and brand= are used now. How would your proposal fit in between these tags?
How about address:branch instead of a new top-level tag? The branch name is effectively part of the address, anyway.
HillWithSmallFields 12:48, 13 September 2012 (BST)
Thanks for your comments so far. Here's my opinion on what has been asked.
name=* is not a good place for the branch name for three reasons. One, it clutters the name label for rendering. Two, people don't always care about the branch, so they don't want to see it. Three, where to put the branch and what punctuation (if any)?
The inconsistencies I mentioned are the reason for making this suggestion. As I say in the main page there is branch information for many convenience stores and restaurants etc. here, as many of them are franchises or chain stores. For a long time I felt there ought to be a place to record this information. I was waiting outside a hypermarket in an unfamiliar town for a friend, and they asked me on the phone where I was. I told them the name of the store, but they said there were many of them in the town, so which one was I at?
If we look at this single store (emart) using Nominatim we see 21 results for "e-mart" (with a hyphen) we see 2 that include the branch name. If we search for "emart" (with no hyphen) we get 9 results, 1 of which has a branch name. It's a very small example, but it's only a single chain of stores (and there are many that have not been mapped yet).
Referring to key:brand I suppose it's a complementary tag. I think it's redundant with key:name, as illustrated by the hotel example there. The use with a petrol station is good example however. "branch" may not be useful for all objects, but what I had in mind was convenience stores and restaurants etc. e.g. name="Family Mart" branch="Geochang Branch". Or name=McDonald's branch="High Street, Croydon". Note that the branch name might not match the street address or local region name due to naming quirks.
I like the idea of using the addr: tag namespace. Thank you. I suppose a top-level tag would be great, but maybe addr:branch=* would be more appropriate.
My main point is to make a place to put this information so that it encourages mappers to capture and record it. Geochang scribe 13:07, 14 September 2012 (BST)
- I am not in favor of using addr:branch=*. In my country, the branch indicates *which* store or bank or restaurant out of many (under the same name) you are talking about, while the address indicates *where* the store/bank/restaurant is. --seav 09:59, 16 September 2012 (BST)
Thank you. I tend to agree, but it was a good idea. Your explanation of 'branch' is exactly why I want to add it to the Wiki. It seems that others agree, as this tag is being used in a few places already. Geochang scribe 06:49, 19 September 2012 (BST)
I'm missing clear distinction of the commonly used tags on the main wiki page of this proposal.
Something like:
- name= What is written on the building or otherwise publicly advertised as the name of the place (e.g. McDonalds on Times Square)
- brand= Name of the company to which this single branch belongs (e.g. McDonalds)
- operator= Entity (person or company) in charge of this local branch (if publicly advertised) (e.g. F. Smith)
- branch= Name of this local branch, differentiating it from the next
- ref= reference number of this local branch, should there be any
I'm by the way against tagging a branch name if there isn't an official one somewhere on the ground. tagging 'what people call the place' is not reproducible.--Chaos99 14:16, 15 October 2012 (BST)
status?
When you set the status to "voting", please fill in a start and an end date. --Fkv 22:24, 22 October 2012 (BST)
- I set the status back to "proposed" for the aforementioned reason. --Fkv 10:03, 26 October 2012 (BST)
Why is this not official and still only 'proposed' since 4 years ago? It is quite popular with nearly 40000 uses and makes alot of sense to have. DFyson (talk) 06:09, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
- Well then you can fill the feature page, which by now only contains a redirect to this proposal, with content and set the feature status (not the proposal status) to "in use" (Inuse). By content I mean that it should describe actual usage, which may differ from proposed usage. --Fkv (talk) 07:06, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
- This page was actually already outside the proposed namespace, but was moved back to the proposed namespace by User:Jojo4u. As far as I'm aware, the page already documents current usage. —seav (talk) 08:31, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
- I've finally filled out the basics for branch=* DFyson (talk) 18:46, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
Osmand
An issue over at Osmand discussing ways to differentiate branches has been active since december 2016: https://github.com/osmandapp/Osmand/issues/3327 --Hjart (talk) 22:12, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
London Underground Network
Apparently this tag is also used for denoting branches of the London underground (i.e. https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/5046483). Does this present a problem? --Hjart (talk) 12:13, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
- @Hjart: It also uses line=* to denote the line name, which conflicts with the power=line tagging scheme. But taginfo does show a lot of usage of branch=* for branch line names. I added a note to Key:branch about that. I'd assume at this point that both definitions of branch=* are roughly equally commonplace, but the usage on POIs and areas differs from the usage on unclosed ways. – Minh Nguyễn 💬 21:41, 25 November 2019 (UTC)