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In Portland, most Walgreens stores have tags on the building with a separate node for the pharmacy counter. This seems wrong to me, and makes each store show up twice in search results. Most of the pharmacy tags are duplicates (address, phone, etc.) but have different opening hours. How could I tag the building with pharmacy hours while preserving the store hours so I can remove the extra nodes? Or is there a better way to deal with this?

asked 08 May '19, 10:33

tguen's gravatar image

tguen
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accept rate: 0%


When pharmacies have differing info -- name, operator, phone, or opening hours -- I tend to map them as separate nodes inside the enclosing shop (which can either be an entire building or just a closed way indicating the shop footprint, if it doesn't occupy the entire building.) The node gets the amenity=pharmacy tag (which is being transitioned to healthcare=pharmacy, so usually both.) The enclosing shop will generally be shop=chemist, shop=convenience, or shop=supermarket.)

Other mappers have approached this situation differently, of course. You may see tags like pharmacy:operator, pharmacy:phone etc. invented to shoehorn all the data into a single element. I've also often seen, for example, opening_hours=24/7 "store"||Mo-Fr 08:00-21:00; Sa 09:00-18:00 "pharmacy".

It really comes down to the question of how to best encode the information so it's least ambiguous and most useful. There's no clear answer at the moment, but my gut tells me that both human readers and software are more likely to successfully parse the data when the pharmacies are mapped as separate nodes. And I've never mapped in Portland, so obviously others have come to this same conclusion.

By the way, it's reasonably common to have a Walgreens Pharmacy inside a shop that is not a Walgreens. Here's a particularly surprising one is inside a Rite Aid: https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/5827855718

Many people would probably think that Rite Aid is a pharmacy, but in this case it isn't. It's good to occasionally question your idea of what a particular brand is. The scope of we call "drug stores" in the USA has gradually shifted over the years. Often toys, groceries, and drinks occupy just as much shelf space as medicine and beauty products. So my recommendation is to tag what the shop actually is, rather than what the brand suggests it ought to be.

Anyway, back on topic, I don't consider using separate nodes for the pharmacies to be an error. I'd recommend just leaving them alone, since there's a general ethic to respect previous mappers' work unless it's erroneous or deprecated (see https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/69363/rule-about-discouraging-remapping for a discussion of that topic.)

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answered 19 Sep '19, 01:18

jmapb's gravatar image

jmapb
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accept rate: 22%

How to do shops within shops is still debated, but most would agree there should not be both.

Having a node within the building outline of the store allows tags like opening_hours to be specific. You can also place the node in the correct area of the store, which could help with directions or locating it (e.g. it's at the back of the store, or go in and it's to the right). For this, you can also make sure entrances are mapped (a node that forms part of the building outline to be tagged with entrance=main or entrance=yes).

Adding the tags to the building (and store) allows us to simply ask: Does this Walgreens have a pharmacy? List all Walgreens with pharmacies. However being a little bit more sophisticated it would still be possible to look at the geometry of the building and see what nodes are within it.

A third option might be to have a relation that specifically links the Pharmacy node and the Walgreens area. There isn't such a relation schema for that, and I'm not aware of any in use. The closest might be the type=site relation.

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answered 08 May '19, 11:51

LivingWithDragons's gravatar image

LivingWithDr...
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accept rate: 4%

I think there is a clue here, in that a Walgreens building (or single address) contains more than one map-able entity. In contains a pharmacy, a variety store, and (in a few situations) a minimal clinic. Each may have it's own hours and contact information. In effect, it is a micro-mall names 'Walgreens'. A similar argument could be made for a Wal-Mart which contains variety, pharmacy, a liquor store, a hair salon, an optician, and an automotive department, all at the same address and under the same roof. A car dealership might have sales, parts, service, and body shop. Once again, all at the same address, but with different phone numbers. It is a common problem in an evolving marketplace.

(10 May '19, 14:46) NitaRae

Every Walgreen’s has a pharmacy. In fact, the chain is considered a pharmacy, even though it has diversified a bit over the years.

(15 Sep '19, 02:05) Happy Hobo

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question asked: 08 May '19, 10:33

question was seen: 1,687 times

last updated: 19 Sep '19, 01:18

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