Talk:Proposal/Building units bedroom distribution
"Conventions"
Number suffixes are usually used for splitting too long data (controversially), and has problems with year suffixes. It should be avoided. *:bedrooms:0=* looks confusing too.
—— Kovposch (talk) 21:10, 20 February 2026 (UTC)
US-americanism / Privacy invading
Counting only bedrooms isn't common in many European countries, e.g. not in Germany. Here we don't count "bedrooms", but rooms. Or square meter. Also, tagging such information of the inside of a building or flat is IMHO privacy invading. It's not the business of a random passerby to know such a thing. Please understand that even if the current tenant is okay to give this info away, a future tenant won't have the freedom anymore to decide on the availability of this info -> it's already in the wild. "My Home is My Castle" ... not the sandcastle of OpenStreetMap !
(talk) 23:35, 02 March 2026 (CET)
- It is quite common though for a developer to state this information on their website and even upload entire building plans - I doubt that extracting just the number would violate the free license or anyone's privacy. On a different note, it is also common in countries that have formerly been under USSR authority to lump living rooms and bedrooms together and count them just as "rooms" (with no indication on kitchen, toilet, bathroom and other auxiliary compartments' layout). --VileGecko (talk) 15:24, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
(near) privacy data ? What for ?
Hello from France.
We are very surprised of that suggestion. What is the goal of putting such (near) privacy data in OpenStreetMap ? Your proposition leads too maaany questions on the methods of acquisition for this informations. In Europe we have frames and rules.
What are the use cases ?
For this kind of exploitation, you should create your own database and make joins to the OSM building referential.
Moreover, counting the bedrooms seems to not be a standard way.
I totally disagreed this proposal.
- As a privacy consious editor I have a different username for editing the database, still I don't have a problem with this proposal for privacy reasons since you cannot tell what appartment has how many bedrooms. It does only tell something about the general inhabitant class for the building if at all.
- As to Americanism/internationality it doesn't have to be used in areas where it is not unsuitable for all kinds of reasons. I can see a case where there are activists on both sides of a discussion and they figure out that this is a good indicator for development in an area.
- Having said that I am not sure that this information is generally useful and I think it might be good to not encourage this tag, but to leave an option to those that in a smaller area see a need/want, and to streamline what would be good to use for such a case. I think if we decide so, there should be a disclaimer on the topic to that effect. Tlk (talk) 15:50, 18 March 2026 (UTC)