updating local businesses

When a business mapped as a node (aka point) moves, there are two schools of thought:

1. The node represents the business itself. If the business has moved, move the node to the new location.
2. The node represents the premises. Keep the node in place and remove the tags specific for that business. If the old location now houses a new business, reuse the node for that -- otherwise use the "disused:" lifecycle prefix. If you know where the old business has moved, map it as a new node in the new location.

Both have their advantages. The main advantage of #1 is that an old URL link to the business in question will still work, and will show the updated location. The main advantage of #2 is that the history of a particular location is preserved, so you can easily look back through the changes and see the various businesses that have occupied that spot. ("Keep the History" is also considered good practice.)

Usually I end up going with option #2, because there are several situations where #1 won't work well:

• You don't know where the new location is, or if there even is one (sounds like this is your situation.)
• The business was mapped as tags directly on a building (generally only done when it occupies the entire building.) Moving nodes makes sense but moving buildings usually doesn't. (Of course buildings do physically move sometimes!) A variation on this is when the new location occupies an entire building and might be better mapped directly on the building.
• The business is located in a building with multiple addresses, and is tagged with an address. Moving the node elsewhere would remove that address from the building. (Though you could still do option #1 by removing the incorrect address tags from the old node and adding a new address node with the old address in the old location.)

Frederik suggests simply deleting the nodes, which is also fine (as long as they're not the only thing tagged with that address in a multi-address building!) but doesn't have the advantages of #1 or #2. It does have the advantage of simplicity though. Personally I don't tend to delete them unless it's an unusual situation. For example, if two neighboring shops mapped as nodes were combined into a single shop with a single address, I'd probably reuse one node and delete the other one.

I definitely agree that using "old_name" probably isn't necessary or helpful. It's meant for situations where people still refer to something by its previous name, so unless you have evidence of this, leave it off. As long as you don't delete the node, the previous name will be there in its history.