Proposal:Man made=mountaineers mailbox

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Mountaineer's mailbox
Proposal status: Inactive (inactive)
Proposed by: Foronda_levt
Tagging: man_made=mountaineers_mailbox
Applies to: node
Definition: A "mailbox" placed at the top of some mountains.
Statistics:

Draft started: 2016-09-04
RFC start: 2016-09-06
A mountaineer's mailbox at Belabia.

Some mountains have a "mailbox" at the summit. When mountaineers reach it, they may leave a card where they write down their contact data, weather, date of the hike... Then, the next mountaineers who reach the summit pick the card in order to give it back to the owner (sending it via mail, for example).

Most mountaineer's mailboxes have a plaque with the name of the summit, elevation and the year when it was placed.

Usage

Rationale

Even if they share the name, mountaineer's mailboxes cannot be tagged with amenity=post_box because they are not used at all to deposit letters. The specific nature of summit mailboxes makes them different from historic=memorial too; plaques in summit mailboxes are used to inform, not to remember anyone.

They can be found in most mountains in Spain (more than 4000), but I don't know if they are so usual in other countries. Some mountaineers even try to "log" as many mailboxes as possible; and even if this practice is not as much extended as it was in the past, it is still customary for most mountaineers to check the interior of the mailboxes.

This object also appears to differ from summit:register=yes.

Tagging

Mailboxes may display a name which is not the same as the official one, with variations such as Aiztzuri/Aitxuri. In addition, they usually bear the date when the mailbox was placed; and have a ref=* which doesn't apply to the mountain itself, just to the mailbox. Moreover, mailboxes are almost never placed in the exact summit; so it would be appropiate to place the summit and the mailbox in different nodes.

Mailboxes are placed by mountain clubs, which are responsible of looking after them. operator=* could be used to display this information. Many other tags could be used to describe the physical nature of the mailbox, such as height=* or material=*.

Examples

Tags Notes Photo
node
man_made=mountaineers mailbox
name=Aiztzuri
date=1975-12-14
operator=Arrola Mendizale Elkartea
Aitxuri (Aizkorri). Note that the operator=* value is not "Antzuola'ko "Arrola" Mendigoizale Taldea". As the mailbox was placed 40 years ago, the name of the organization has changed, and therefore the tag should reflect the current name. This is also useful to keep tagging uniform (if there's a newer mailbox placed by the same organization, it will bear the current name; it would make no sense to tag with different values the same operator). Example
node
man_made=mountaineers mailbox
name=Larredez
date=1981-1-1
operator=Club de Montaña Gasteiz
Aitxuri (Iturrieta). Larredez is an alternative name for Aitxuri. This is common mostly in less known summits. Example

Applies to

Nodes. Summit mailboxes are usually small in size.

Rendering

Summit mailbox.svg an icon proposal.

Features/Pages affected

man_made=*, as it would be a new value for this key.

Comments

Please comment on the discussion page.

External links