Proposal talk:Milk types

milk:plant-based: Use underscore rather than hyphen

According to Any tags you like#Syntactic conventions for new tags, milk:plant-based should actually be written with an underscore rather than a hyphen, i.e. milk:plant_based :) Havelock Vétérini (talk) 20:03, 30 August 2026 (UTC)

yep, I came here to say that! :) Amᵃᵖanda (talk) 09:16, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

The hyphen is intentional. According to Wiktionary, “plant-based” is spelled with a hyphen, not with a space. In places that do not support spaces, such as OSM tags, underscores generally represent spaces only, not hyphens.

So the question is whether we adhere to OSM tagging practices (by using an underscore) or to common English spelling (by using a hyphen). Trainsgender (talk) 23:27, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

Changing drink:raw_milk / drink:soy_milk

I am wondering whether the existing drink tags, e.g. drink:soy_milk or drink:milk, should also be deprecated by this proposal and move to drink:milk:soy and drink:milk:animal respectively for better coherence. This could also be a way to introduce new tags under drink, such as drink:milk:oat (drink:oat_milk has a few taginfo usages, but no documentation).

But how would we handle the case of raw milk? Should it be milk:animal/cow/camel:raw and / drink:milk:animal/cow/camel:raw ? Havelock Vétérini (talk) 10:55, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

As for the first question: I think this would be a good idea to keep things coherent, but I'm unsure as to whether to include it in this proposal, or attempt it later as a separate proposal.

For raw milk, I see two options: either we come up with a convention as to whether “milk” implies by default that the milk is raw, pasteurised, UHT-treated, etc., or we agree that “milk” does not imply any of these and tags like milk:<type>:raw=* can be used to add this information. In any case, I think this is outside of the scope of this proposal and should get its own proposal and/or discussion. Trainsgender (talk) 23:35, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

milk:plant-based=yes/no & subkeys

Documentation improvement: I presume the milk:plant-based=yes (& {{tag|milk:animal||yes)} tag would be implied if any one of the tags has a subkeys has a yes, right? i.e.milk:oat=yes would imply milk:plant-based=yes. likewise milk:plant-based=no would imply milk:oat=no. Amᵃᵖanda (talk) 09:22, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

Future Idea: Oat milk doesn't cost anything more

I've heard that some places will charge extra for switching a drink to oat milk. This could be tagged with milk:plant-based:fee=(yes/no), but I don't think this is needed right now for this version Amᵃᵖanda (talk) 10:08, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

This was my idea from the beginning, I just thought I'd give it its own proposal after this one. Trainsgender (talk) 23:29, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

milk=no → no milk here?

The proposal says (& I agree with it)

milk=* (without any subkeys) could be used as well, but it provides very little information over just not adding this information at all.

but could we define milk=no to mean “This is a place where you would expect to get drinks with milk, but this place does not offer any milk products”? Imagine a MapComplete/StreetComplete task to add the availability of oat milk to venues. They would need an option of “No there is no milk here at all” Amᵃᵖanda (talk) 07:38, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Good suggestion, I've added it to the proposal. Trainsgender (talk) 15:21, 20 September 2026 (UTC)