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I am editing a campus of my hometown (in China), and usually they have barriers and gates around. However, I have found that the naming of the gates is a bit confusing. For example, the university is called "XX Univ", shall I name one of the gate as "XX Univ Northern Gate", or just simply "Northern Gate"?

The former way makes the name very formal and complete. However, the gates are usually attached to the boundaries, and the relationships are quite clear. One of my concerns is that for searching function of OSM, if I search Northern Gate, I may get all of them. Besides, If I search XX Univ Northern Gate, I may not get the result I want because the tag actually doesn't exist.

Any tips?

asked 17 Jun '16, 20:50

cabineer's gravatar image

cabineer
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accept rate: 0%


It's a tricky question. Personally I wouldn't actually go for "XX Univ Northern Gate" unless that really is the name of the gate (e.g. on a sign). If it doesn't have a name at all I probably wouldn't give it one. As an example, I didn't name either of the entrances to BBC Studios Elstree, but did add "entrance=main" and "entrance=audience" as that's what they're labelled as. I wouldn't expect a search engine such as Nominatim to be able to use that though; ultimately a human is making the journey and they'll be able to say to themselves "this is a gate into XX Univ, and it is the northernmost of all of such gates, so it is where I want to go".

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answered 19 Jun '16, 15:48

SomeoneElse's gravatar image

SomeoneElse ♦
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accept rate: 16%

Thanks for the answer! I think ideally that it should be a "entrance_name" involved. To be honest, I think the "XX Univ Northern Entrance" is actually the official name, which is written on the entrance. Some near by bus stops use the name as well. However, for people who live near by, they do use "Northern Entrance" as a simplified expression.

About the search engine, I am more afraid that if "XX Univ Northern Entrance" doesn't actually exist, but there are "XX Univ" and many "Northern Entrance" exist, how do they work...

Is it possible to suggest a tag "entrance_name"?

(19 Jun '16, 15:56) cabineer
1

You can use any tag you like, but it's obviously best if you use the same tags as other people for the same thing. Using taginfo you can see that "entrance_name" is used, but not much:

http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/search?q=entrance_name

If you want to see where things are used locally, you can click the button at the top right of the "taginfo" screen to get to "Overpass Turbo". For example here's a map of barrier=gate:

http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/gSc

and here's a similar map, this time of gates with a name:

http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/gSd

To create that second query I just manually edited the query language at the left to include '["name"]' in each of the three queries run to create the map (for nodes, ways, and relations).

In your case if the name really is signed as "XX Univ Northern entrance", then I'd definitely use that name.

(19 Jun '16, 16:28) SomeoneElse ♦

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question asked: 17 Jun '16, 20:50

question was seen: 2,365 times

last updated: 19 Jun '16, 16:28

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum