Talk:Tag:memorial=stolperstein

memorial=stolperstein or memorial:type=stolperstein

Notification @The RedBurn:, @Chrabros:, @Geozeisig:, @Dcapillae:

This page indicates « This tag is mainly used in Germany but disputed, prefer memorial=stolperstein instead. » but where is the dispute? can someone add a link to the relevent discussions?

Moreover, according to taginfo, right now, there is 19 344 nodes with memorial:type=stolperstein and only 72 with memorial=stolperstein. So it may seems that memorial:type=stolperstein is the main tag and memorial=stolperstein is the alternative…

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 08:51, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi, @VIGNERON:! I haven't got any additional information. I only translated the English version of this page into Spanish. I'm sorry, I don't know anything about this dispute. --Daniel Capilla (talk) 21:15, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Misuse of name=*

name=* should be reserved to the name given to the tagged object itself. Similar to person:date_of_birth=* and person:date_of_death=*, I suggest to instead use person:name=* to indicate the name of the remembered person. Teuxe (talk) 16:14, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Can you add the link where you had a previous discussion about changes of all these memorial pages? If we didn't have a discussion yet, I would revert your changes until I can read some other mapper's opinion about this. I understand your rationale, but stolpersteins, busts and statues always commemorate a single person, and you basically recommend to leave the name=* tag empty. It would make the life of every mapper and renderer much more complex, we would have to explain it to every new mapper that you have to tag these 3 kinds of memorials differently. --Infeeeee (talk) 12:01, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

As there is no reply from Teuxe, I revert their changes until further discussion --Infeeeee (talk)

@Teuxe and Infeeeee: aa bit late but I agree that person:name=* would be better for the name of the person. First it's consistent with the other fields on the same object. Then it's consistent with name=* (which is the name of the object, the stone in this case ; not the name of the person), if we use name=* then the value should be "stolperstein dedicated to John Smith" not "John Smith" (which is consistent to what is done for busts and statues AFAIK). Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 13:31, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

Following your recommendation all bus stops should be named like "Bus stop dedicated to XY street" and the name of the bust stop should be stored in street:name or something. Are bus stops misusing the name tag?
I don't know what do you mean about statue and bust names, there the subject: prefix is used for some reason not even the person: as here. I don't see anything about this in the wiki, as I see currently all of them use similar tagging. Please link to this name change that happened to other memorials.
I'm not against duplicating the name in the person:name key, e.g. it can be useful if there is a typo on the stolperstein and the name=* should contain the name as written for easier verifiability, and the person:name with the correct spelling. --Infeeeee (talk) 11:22, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

@Infeeeee: absolutely not, bus stops do have a name (it's usually written on it). Stolpersteine (and most memorials) don't. When one need to talk about a Stolperstein, they use a description including the name of the person it commemorates (or the location, or whatever... like "stolperstein dedicated to John Smith" or "stolperstein of/for John Smith"), which is not it's name of the stone.

Please have a look at name=* (including but not limited to "most prominent name on a sign posted on the feature itself" and the section "When not to use").

It's not about duplication, it's putting the right value in the right place. Right now, the name of the person is used as the name of the object which is wrong. For the distinction between the name as written and the name with correct spelling, there is already inscription=* for that purpose.

Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 11:53, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

It sounds like you haven't seen a stolperstein yet? I know they are rare in France. They contain only text, nothing else, what do you mean "it's not written on them". If you understand the language used, it's clear that it's the name of a person, but let's see a stolperstein I surveyed yesterday, here is a photo of it on wikimedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PetschauerFotoThalerTamas.jpg Its inscription is in Hungarian, so I guess you won't really understand what's written on it: If you don't understand the text, you just see that one line of the inscription is bigger than the others, so I don't really see how it's different from a bus stop which has a big name plate.
I've read the name pages multiple times on this wiki and I still haven't found a passage which forbids this usage. "most prominent name on a sign posted on the feature itself": this is exactly the reason the usage of the name tag is acceptable for memorials, because it's prominent, written with a bigger font on stolpersteins.
On the inscription tag I like to put the text as-is, and on stolpersteins it's always uppercase, and inscription=* should contain the full text, not just the name of the person. We already have duplicated data as person:date_of_death=* and person:date_of_birth=* also can be read from the inscription, so I don't see why it would be a problem just duplicating the name in person:name. --Infeeeee (talk) 13:39, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

@Infeeeee: you are confusing the inscription and the name. The bigger line is the name of the person, not the name of the stone. Again, it's an inscription not a "sign posted on the feature itself". It's not about duplication, the question is "Misuse of name=*". I'll raise the question on name=*. Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 14:05, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

And the name of the memorial. Like the XY street is the name of the bust stop AND the street. Why is it such an unbelievable concept that 2 things can have the same name. I'm not confusing anything.--Infeeeee (talk) 14:37, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

@Infeeeee: do you have anything to confirm it's the name of the memorial? And even so, if it's the name of the memorial, the page should says "name of the memorial" not "name of the person". Yes, several things can have the same name (there is 55 500 "Hauptstraße" and 44 182 "Main Street" https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/name#values and bus stops sometimes do have the same name as the streets), it's not the case here. Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 15:20, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes, you can see it on all stolpersteins, it's written on them, isn't it enough? Wiki is correct as the name of the person should be the name of the stolperstein, with some exceptions, e.g. a typo.
We are debating about semantics, if you want to change current tagging standard, please open a proposal to deprecate name=* on stolpersteins and maybe on memorial=bust and memorial=statue, as they follow similar tagging practices --Infeeeee (talk) 18:02, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

@Infeeeee: to me it's seems very far from enough ; it's not what is done for other memorials, it's not what name is meant to be.

We don't really want to deprecate name (some stones may have a real proper name), we want the name of the person to be tagged as the name of the person.

Where do you see on memorial=bust, memorial=statue, memorial=war_memorial or memorial=plaque (and so on) that the name of the subject should be use as name of the object? memorial=stolperstein is the one who is inconsistent with the usual common practices. Should I really make a proposal Proposal:Name to say that the existing key should be used as intended and the Stolpersteine are not an exception?

Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 18:36, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

This "problem" only affects memorial types which always commemorate a single person. memorial=stolperstein and memorial=bust by definition will always related to one person, memorial=statue usually also depicts a single person, but not always, so it's just partially related. The other war memorials, and plaques can have wildly different topics, so it's not really affected by this. I see on the page of bust they conveniently didn't define what the name=* should be, but if you just randomly check on some busts on the map, you will see that most mappers simply add the name of the person depicted on the bust to name=*. Another similar, "misuse" is common with historic=tomb. Again, it's not documented in the wiki, but if you check some usage, you will see mappers don't use buried:name=* there, but simply add the name of the buried person to name=*.
Your proposal should be something like this: "Deprecate name on memorials and tombs which commemorate a single person. Instead use person:name=* on stolpersteins, buried:name=* on tombs and subject:name=* on other memorials" As I see this is what you really want. Or your problem is simply it shouldn't be documented here, and we should just delete the definition on name=* on this page as on the bust and tomb pages? --Infeeeee (talk) 19:19, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Without disregaring the other discussion thread: I would argue the person to actually be the subject of the Stolperstein. Given that this wiki page recommends subject:wikidata=* to refer to the wikidata entry of the person. Usually, subject=* would be assigned the event (i.e. Nazi-regime, Kristallnacht, etc.) referred to by the memorial, but since a Stolperstein is referring to the victims of the Nazi-regime by definition (of this wiki-page and others), I think subject=* makes sense to refer to the inscribed person instead. If you ask yourself "what is the subject?", the person is also the most likely answer to that, imo.

I agree that a Stolperstein itself really does not have a "name" in the sense of how the Siegessäule on Wikipedia has a name=* of "Siegessäule" because it is always referred to by that name. In my experiece, people refer to a Stolperstein mainly with "Stolperstein" and not the name of the person inscribed there. That said, I don't think assigning "Stolperstein" to name=* makes much sense, either. At4rka (talk) 12:03, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

Tagging as tourism=artwork

A lot of historic=memorials are considered as artworks, were there a proposal about deprecating one of those tags? artwork_type=stolperstein doesn't even have any use on the map yet. What was the point of this change? It doesn't seems like documenting existing usage of tags.

@BlackBike you mention some talks about these in changeset comments, can you link to that? Is it available in English somewhere?

I think this tagging recommendation affects a lot other tags, not just stolpersteins, like most busts and statues are "also artworks", I think a consultation with the wider community would be required before changing the tagging recommendation of an element with more than 50 thousand already tagged instances. --Infeeeee (talk) 19:16, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

It is clear that an stumbling stone, created by artist Gunter Demnig is both. Its a memorial and it is a piece of art.

So it is correct, that both these informations should find their way into the OSM database.

In the past it was common to tag Stolpersteine with tourism=artwork and historic=memorial.

Around 2023 there was a big change and without discussion (as far as I know) all Stolpersteine were changed from memorial:type=stolperstein to memorial=stolperstein.

During this process the tag tourism=artwork was removed without reason.

In many discussions with members of the OSM-Community we agreed to go back to the tagging scheme of the past and add tourism=artwork. As far as I know this is since a long time documented in the OSM-Wiki.

The last discussion was yesterday during the OSM-Meeting in Bochum. My edits in this Wiki are the result of this meeting and discussion.

There were many more personal discussions on this theme before with mappers who edit the Stolpersteine. I think me (black_bike) and gmbo spent hours in the streets to find the stones and put hour knowledge into OSM, Wikipedia, Wikimedia-Commons and Wikidata. BlackBike (talk) 20:22, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

The reason to add artwork_type=stolperstein was that the tool StreetComplete asks user for the artwork_type if they pass by an artwort without this tag.

I was informed by other users that they removed tourism=artwork instead of adding information on the artwork_type.

In our discussions we didn't find a good matching type among the documented types in the OSM-Wiki. It's not streetart like some mappers tagged it and it's more than a plate with a name. In my documentation I gave all the reasons why it's an artwork of it's own typ, not comparable with other artistic work. BlackBike (talk) 20:30, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

Why just stolpersteins, why not all memorials? How this differs from busts, statues, sculptures in this regard?

I don't really understand why the wikidata and wikipedia editors' opinions matter here, this is osm, not a project of Wikimedia Foundation. We have a proposal process, a forum, several mailing lists, I think such a big change affecting hundred-thousands of elements with established tagging should be discussed somewhere more visible than a random German community of contributors of orthogonal projects who are not necessary contributors here.

About the memorial:type change: it wasn't an additional tag, it was standardization of a key: every other memorials used the memorial=* key, only stolpersteins used memorial:type=*. It was discussed in some places, in the forum: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/historic-memorial-memorial-type-gestrichen/73688/6 And here on the wiki: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Tag:historic%3Dmemorial#memorial:type

The StreetComplete reasoning sounds like tagging for the renderer. You should open an issue on Streetcomplete repo, not changing the existing tagging already used by a lot of data consumers.

But my main question is, why only stolpersteins? The difference between tourism=artwork and historic=memorial was always always unclear, and I met several mappers who preferred one over the other, I think the resolution of this decades old tagging debate shouldn't be resolved here. Until there are greater community consensus I would revert the page to the old state. If the majority of mappers agree that the solution of the artwork vs memorial debate is double tagging, I would retag the hundreds of stolpersteins I helped importing in Hungary. --21:15, 15 May 2026 (UTC) Infeeeee (talk) 21:15, 15 May 2026 (UTC)