Talk:Tag:memorial=plaque

Road plaques

Say at the beginning of each rural road there is a granite plaque:

Nebbelsham Valley Road
Length: 26.765 km.
Total Cost: $66,555,444.33
Authority: Platzworth County Road Bureau
Designer: Plifwitz Surveying Co.
Contractor: Nurdsburd Engineering Inc.
Construction Period: 2016/1 through 2019/6

How to tag? Jidanni (talk) 05:51, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

That sounds more like an information=board --Pbb (talk) 23:28, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks but no, it is commemorating the (re)building of the road. Not showing any thing tourists or residents need to know. Also it is etched in granite. More of a dedication plaque. Jidanni (talk) 02:28, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Multilingual inscriptions

Is there an guidance on how inscriptions in multiple languages should be tagged?

Going by other keys, something like the following seems sane:

• inscription=full inscription incorporating all languages
• inscription:xx¹=* inscription in language 1
• inscription:xx²=* inscription in language 2
• inscription:xx³=* inscription in language 3

(where xxⁿ is the relevant 2-letter language code. e.g. en, fr, ga, es, etc)

Thoughts?

--Dónal (talk) 15:35, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

I think it is a good ideal for bilingual countries of minority (language) groups commemorating their heritage. B-unicycling (talk) 15:57, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

It may already be an established practice per taginfo searches. inscription:de,inscription:en, inscription:es, inscription:fr, inscription:ga --Dónal (talk) 16:05, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

inscription=* preferred over memorial:text=*?

As of Dec 2020, there are 17,740 uses of memorial:text=*^taginfo vs 72,387 uses of inscription=*^taginfo.

Should memorial:text=* be flagged as no longer desirable on the memorial=plaque page?

--Dónal (talk) 15:52, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree. inscription=* is specifically defined as "used for the text of inscriptions on buildings, memorials,...". This page also has flagged memorial:text=* as a tagging mistake. BubbleGuppies (talk) 02:03, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Horizontal surface

"or other vertical surface"

What if it's a horizontal stone built into the floor? Brightj (talk) 14:45, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

I added memorial=pavement_plaque to Tag:historic=memorial because it had some use already, but then I was messaged and they recommended not using that tag and instead using memorial=plaque with support=ground => for a plaque on pavement

"Maybe this tag has 61 uses but that doesn’t mean they’re good !"

Brightj (talk) 15:24, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

commemoration date ?

A lot of plaques have this type of date.
Could we use commemoration_date=* ?
--Pyrog (talk) 16:34, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

That's my same question. A lot of plaques have the year, especially true in Italy, especially in w:Roman numerals --Valeriobozz (talk) 09:45, 6 December 2025 (UTC)

I wonder if we just set the start_date=* on the plaque. This may have sense if the plaque was set in that date I guess (?) --Valeriobozz (talk) 09:47, 6 December 2025 (UTC)

The summary box at Key:date suggests to use "date" for "date when related event happened (memorials)".

"start_date" is the date when a plaque was installed. Key:start_date notes "Date when feature opened or the construction of the feature finished."

Sample: osm:node/13429039286/history/4 has date=C19 and start_date=1967-03-01

If an event is being commemorated, that might also be found in "subject". --99 tabazan (talk) 19:00, 21 January 2026 (UTC)--99 tabazan (talk) 19:00, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

PS: Key:date is problematic, as most of its values are not following that definition and the key invites this.

There is a discussion about deprecating it and recommending others, like historic:date=* instead. --99 tabazan (talk) 09:15, 9 February 2026 (UTC)