Proposal:Sells:

Bureau de tabac
Proposal status:	Draft (under way)
Proposed by:	Overflorian
Tagging:	sellsː*=*
Applies to:	, , ,
Definition:	Indicates the selling of a product or a service
Statistics:
Rendered as:	HIdden on basic render
Draft started:	2023-10-09

Proposal

Use the key prefix sellsː*=* to indicate that a specific product of service is sold.

Rationale

Many complementary tags are currently used over businesses. A lot of them are duplicate and do not respect the principle of One feature, one OSM element.

The consequence is that for the same information both family tags are still in use, involving confusion, misunderstanding and poor reuse capacity.

Example of duplicated tags

Product/service sold	Generic tag		sells:* tag
Tobacco	tobacco=yes		sellsːtobacco=yes
Newspapers	newspapers=*		sellsːnewspapers=*
Lottery	lottery=*		sellsːlottery=*

The generic tags are much more used than the sells:* tag (ratio is always less than 10%). The reason is simple: they never have been formalized. The simpler version is therefore obviously more used.

Why use the sells:* prefix

In October 2023, no specific tag is widely used over shop=kiosk (source) ; shop=newsagent (source) ; shop=convenience (source) to mention sold products or services. The choice is therefore not obvious.

Use sellsː*=* is the best choice because:

• Benefits:
  • natural use already started (source: Taginfo)
  • uses "natural" language
  • open wild new possibilities in the future, with variations such as sellsːtobacco=*, sellsːe-cigarette=*, sellsːnewspapers=* and much more
• drawback: more complicated, less obvious and direct, less currently widespread than direct tags such as tobacco=*, e-cigarette=*, newspapers=* and more

Avoided alternatives

1. direct tags, e.g. tobacco=yes
   • Benefits: more widely used (figures on 2023-10-11):
     • 371 sellsːtobacco=yes (source : TagInfo) for 4766 tobacco=yes (source : taginfo), ratio = 7,8%
     • 12 sells:ice_cream=yes (source : TagInfo) for 742 ice_cream=yes (source : TagInfo) ratio = 1,6%
     • 16 sellsːlottery=yes (source : TagInfo) for 2147 lottery=yes (source : TagInfo) ratio = 0,7%
     • 0 sellsːgambling=* (source : TagInfo) for 3468 gambling=* (source : TagInfo) ratio = 0%
   • Inconvénients : moins précis, moins explicite, ne permet pas de différencier la vente à emporter de la consommation sur place (exemple : bars à chichas)
2. sells=tobacco, such a tag is only marginally used, used only twice worldwide (source : Taginfo). Though this option might seem simpler, multiple sold products would be separated by semi-colums (e.g. : sells=tobacco;cigare;e-cigarette;pipe;cbd.), which sould be avoided. Instead, we suggest a schema inspired by the recycling:xxx=yes , for which a unique key is used for each type.
3. saleːtobacco=yes
   • Benefit: using a noun and not a verb, which is the usual practive
   • Drawback: no use at all worldwide, and could be mistaken for sales (discount).
4. shop=tobacco;convenience (ou toute autre valeur complémentaire après un point-virgule pour préciser l'usage complémentaire du magasin)
   • Benefit: no need to defined a main shop activity, especially in the context of shop with several products of equal importance (e.g. a shop selling both newspaper and tobacco).
   • Drawbacks: is incompatible with most of the renderings, very low present usage, is incompatible with most of the editors. Such practive is discouraged.
5. product=tobacco
   • Benefit: the tag product=* is widely used (~99 000 worldwide : TagInfo)
   • Drawbacks: product=tobacco is marginally used (14 times worldwide , source : TagInfo) ; does not solve the multiple values issues; documentation of product=* clearly excludes usage for sold products: "product=* is a key used to specify the human manufactured output or product that a feature (such as a industrial=factory) produces."
6. productːtobacco=yes
   • Benefit:precise, explicit, can handle the multiple values issue; does not rely a on a verb ("it sells") but on a noun: product.
   • Drawback: no use present use worldwide, and could be mistaken for product=* .

Previous discussions on the french forum lead to a vote with moderate preference for sellsːtobacco=yes over tobacco=yes.

Over 23 voters, 57% of the french contributors are in favour of using sellsːtobacco=yes as the complementary tag to use in France in parallel of shop=tobacco

Prevent the contact:* disaster

Remember that we formalized the family key contact:*=* too late, leading to a persistant use of duplicated tags, making hard for the contributors to respect the principle of One feature, one OSM element.

Generic tag		contact:* tag
phone=*		contact:phone=*
email=*		contact:email=*
website=*		contact:website=*
facebook=*		contact:facebook=*

Let's avoid this disaster by formalizing before the sellsː*=* are too widely used.

Tagging

Key suffix

By default, sellsː*=* prefix should be used with every product/service that is sold. It applies (but is not limited to):

• for a place that sells tobacco : use shop=tobacco when it is the main business, use sellsːtobacco=yes when it is an auxiliary business
• for a place that sells e-cigarette : use shop=e-cigarette when it is the main business, use sellsːe-cigarette=yes when it is an auxiliary business

Exceptions

By exception, sellsː*=* prefix should not be used with product/service already widely usedː

• drink:*=*

Possible confusions

• Selling a service might service=*

Values

Using sellsː*=* prefix, value yes is used by default. But it could be expended for more precisions.

Values example: tobacco

The generic tag sellsːtobacco=yes is the default value. Il is possible to be more precise about the sold products/services :

• cigarettes sellsːtobacco=cigarette
• rolling tobacco: sellsːtobacco=rolling
• shisha tobacco: sellsːtobacco=tabamel
• chewing tobacco: sellsːtobacco=chewing
• cigar: sellsːtobacco=cigar
• accessories: sellsːtobacco=accessories

Values example: newspapers

The generic tag sellsːnewspapers=yes is the default value. Il is possible to be more precise about the sold newspapers :

Picture	Name of the newspaper	Tag
	La Dépêche	sellsːnewspapers=La Dépêche

Futur tags

In the future, while creating a new suffix for sellsː*=*, please try to use umbrella tags as much as possible.

E.g. use sellsːtobacco=cigar / Do not use sellsːcigar=yes

Examples

Picture	Main object tag	Complementary tags
	shop=convenience	sellsːtobacco=cigarette / sellsːfood=candy / sellsːnewspaper=yes

Rendering

The generic render should not display a specific icon or text.

The information regarding the products and services sold are useful for search engines and specific renders (for example, a map of all the places selling tobacco).

Features/Pages affected

Documentation will be updated for the following pages:

• shop=e-cigarette, sells:tobacco and tobacco=*
• Detail possible confusion over the service=* page
• Detail possible confusion over the product=* page

Following pages will be created:

• sells:e-cigarette=*

External discussions

• The topic of adopting sellsːtobacco=yes has originally been discussed in a french proposal Proposal:FR:Bureau de tabac and associated discussion https://forum.openstreetmap.fr/t/bureaux-de-tabac-standardiser-les-tags-en-france-vote/17839
• Discussion about the chance of using this proposal on vending=newspapers instead of brand=*: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Tag:vending%3Dnewspapers

Comments

Please comment on the discussion page.