Proposal:Extend telephone covers

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extend telephone covers
Proposal status: Abandoned (inactive)
Proposed by: Lukas458
Tagging: covered=roof / phone_hood / open_phone_box / closed_phone_box
Applies to: node (amenity=telephone)
Definition: add four more values to the key "covered" for detailed mapping of public telephone's covers
Statistics:

Draft started: 2020-06-05
RFC start: 2020-06-07


Rationale

At the moment, there is no real way to tag the different types of covers a public telephone can have. There is the key covered=* with its values no,yes and booth. But there is no way to tag the cover precisely. covered=yes means "it is overed by something", but there is not said by what it is covered.

Furthermore, the tag covered=booth isn't liked by two reasons: first "booth" is not the british english name for a telephone box and second, just "booth" is to imprecise. There are two types of real "telephone booths", those which are closed with a door and those which are open (see pictures below). To both of them you would say it's a booth, because both have at least two sides going down to the floor.

covered=booth and booth=*

The existing tagging uses covered=booth to say that an amenity=telephone has a phone box. But there aso exists the key booth=*, often used to specify the type/special name of booth, in Great Britain for example the red "K6" booths. But booth=* is also used as an yes/no value to specify whether there is a booth at all. Some use it like this because they don't see an added value in extra tagging covered=booth when booth=* is there, and some others just tag booth=yes as general when they don't know the exact type of booth, which would be not uncommon for people who just want to say "there is a telephone with phone box".

My purpose is to avoid this kind of either let's call it double tagging or kind of unclear tagging. Another point is, that we have to look a bit further: The proposal for public bookcases was approved, including the undertag public_bookcase:type=phone_box for converted phone boxes. But how to tag the type of converted phone box then? It's a special theme, yes, but is has its authorization. Would you use booth=* for that then? Maybe this would be ok, but on the other hand, then it would be clear that booth=* is not an undertag of covered=booth. But why using covered=booth at all then? This proposal wants to solve this by clearly distiguishing between a telephone that a has a phone box, a bookcase-phone box (the tag for that we have already) and the type of phone box - concernig tagging the type, no matter whether a phone or books are in it.

Proposed tags

Examples

Tagging until now Tagging with proposed tags Example image

or:

criteria: closed phone boxes are really closed, so a full enclosure for the phone's user is meant (when the door is closed)

London telephone.jpg

or:

Telefonzelle an der Straße Höchsten Wuppertal 57.jpg
  • amenity=telephone
  • covered=booth
  • booth=the type of phone box if it has a name and is known

or:

  • amenity=telephone
  • covered=yes
  • booth=the type of phone box if it has a name and is known

or:

or:

  • amenity=telephone
  • covered=open_phone_box
  • phone_box:type=the type of phone box if it has a name and is known

Criteria: open phone boxes have two side covers going down to the floor, buth there's no door. Three sides are full-covered down to the floor, but one side is open.
Difference to phone hoods: The feet of the phone's user are covered at their sides.

Telephone box with internet access.JPG
  • amenity=telephone
  • covered=phone_hood

Criteria: a construct designed to cover the phone's user's head and his upper body (or just a part of it). Like what a hood is/does. Difference to open phone boxes: The feet of the phone's user are not covered at their sides.

Telstra Payphone (With Internet Access) .jpg

Difference to phone hoods: There is either no sidecover at all or it is just at one side. There is no hood constructed, but just a roof.

Public-telephone-coverd-videophone.jpg
(A phone box which is reused to be a public bookcase)
  • amenity=public_bookcase
  • public_bookcase:type = phone_box
  • no real way to tag the type of reused phone box, booth=* might be rarely used for this. But of course, without covered=booth, because the phone box is sufficient described with the two tags above.
  • amenity=public_bookcase
  • public_bookcase:type = phone_box
  • phone_box:type=TelH_90
Bücherzelle Albstadt-Lautlingen (Zollernalbkreis).jpg

More information

Why using the key covered=* for that and not a new key?

When wanting to got further into detail, we have two possibilities: Leaving a strict yes/no-key and creating a new one for details, or extending the values of the yes/no-key. How a telephone is covered we map onto a amenity=telephone-node, and I think it should be stayed with this. But then, covered=* must have more values than just "yes" or "no". And I do not see a reason why not to do that. It's the logical consequence, for keys like departures_board=* we do also have more values than yes/no, so for example "realtime" or "timetable" which go further into detail.
I do know that covered=* has been used for covered roads mainly, but even not only. There are many more covered things in the world, and creating a new key would make more "mess" than we need at all. Also, covered=* is not just a yes/no key at the moment at all, because we do have covered=arcade, covered=colonnade etc.
Just think of the key service=*, this key has also different values, depeding on whether it is tagged to a railway way or to a highway way.

The keys shelter=* and shelter_type=* would unfortunately not fit, because a telephone box is not really the same as an amenity=shelter. It's a shelter for the phone's user, but it's not inteded to give (several) people shelter from rain or something. Telephone boxes have capacity of one person and these objects should not be mixed with the shelter-tag.

What are the advantages of the new scheme according to the existent one?

  • When mapping a telephone box, it's possible to distinguish in tagging between open and closed telephone boxes
  • When mapping a telephone box, there are two tags: covered=closed_phone_box for the box itself and phone_box:type only for the type of phone box, if known. No way of double tagging by covered=booth and booth=no/yes/type...
  • It's possible to go further into detail by what the phone is covered
  • It's cleared that a closed phone box, an open one and a phone hood are three different things that get different values, at the moment even some phone hoods are also mixed into tagging covered=booth.


Why can covered=booth and booth=* not stay?

"booth" is not the right term. It's not british english and does not say whether a phone box, but withour door, would be also a "booth" or not. phone_box is the reight term and that's also why for bookcases, public_bookcase:type=phone_box and not public_bookcase:type=booth or phone_booth was chosen.

More example pictures

A closed_phone_box (it has a door and is full-covering when closing it).
A phone_hood
Another phone_hood.