Talk:Tag:surveillance:type=ALPR

Let the chatter begin. --Aspensmonster (talk) 04:55, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

British English term is ANPR

Tags/values in OSM should use British English. From what I understand, the British English term is "Automatic number-plate recognition" (ANPR). Just in case someone wants to run a proper proposal process for the surveillance=* tag... --Zschoche (talk) 11:43, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't have a strong preference one way or another --- naming things is, after all, one of the hardest things to do --- but the page/section Any tags you like#How to name new tags is self-contradictory, for a start (emphasis added):

unless this is a very specific definition, with cultural and geographical bounds that would not make sense in another country, try to have an eye towards a world-wide view (not Europe-centric, not Britain-centric, not US-centric...) to prevent the tag from becoming skunked.

...

Ideally, the value of a feature tag is one word, in lowercase, using British English if possible.

If I were aiming for a "world-wide view," then I would probably leave off "license" or "number" altogether --- given that both are hyphenated modifiers of the same root "plate" --- and just have "Automated Plate Reader (APR)" (well, "apr" for lowercase) instead.

Maybe I'll poke around at what the "formal"/"proper" proposal process is and perhaps see who-all is actively using and contributing to this particular namespace beyond DeFlock. --Aspensmonster (talk) 07:45, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Having a world-wide view and using one language for encoding that view is not a contradiction. It gets tricky if the same word has different meaning/scope in different languages. But this is not the case here. We have two terms - ANPR in British English and ALPR in American English - with each the same meaning. So we have to pick one term - and we should pick the British English one. (And there may also be an occasion to pick a term - see proposal for a new key discussed here.) --Zschoche (talk) 09:16, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

I understand your point regarding the BE vs. AE distinction—BE would probably be preferable. And, above all, using lowercase! It wasn't very wise to introduce "ALPR" as a value for surveillance:type=*, especially in uppercase. Now, unfortunately, it has 90,654 uses compared to just 5 for "ANPR." However, if we use it now as a suffix key (surveillance:*=*), we can always change it ... Although "ALPR" is admittedly quite well-established by now (including a lengthy Wiki page, which, however, was not created until 2025!)—as is so often the case in OSM, it’s not ideal... But if one intends to change the term—or even just switch it to lowercase—then it would probably be best to choose a term that completely avoids any conflicts between BE and AE. By the way, Wikipedia lists several synonyms, such as "Automatic vehicle identification (AVI)" (unclear in which countries this is common—or perhaps again open to misinterpretation; "avi" also means "Audio Video Interleave" and so on). Of course, an official proposal would be the ideal approach (including a change of surveillance:type=ALPR?). However, I’m not entirely sure whether that is actually necessary in this particular case... But I don't want to stop you from doing that. My proposal regarding surveillance:type:ALPR=yes and surveillance:type:ALPR=no (in Talk:Key:surveillance) represented a purely pragmatic approach, adopting the established term—including its capitalization—thereby ensuring logical consistency (and potentially avoiding discussions within the community, thereby gaining acceptance more quickly). I actually think it would be great if one could put two proposals up for a vote within a single proposal submission (although, as far as I know, that seems to be possible only in the forum—by means of a poll, which is something you could also do before starting with a proposal). Small problem – difficult decision. --Goodidea (talk) 14:18, 17 March 2026 (UTC)