Taps seem clearly defined to me and I don't think a combination of amenity=fountain, tap=yes would make sense for the examples on the wiki: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:man_made%3Dwater_tap
One thing I keep wondering about on this topic is how to tag very simple fountains that are widespread in Switzerland along hiking paths ( https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Adlisberg_-_Gockhausen_IMG_4215.jpg) or in villages ( https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brunnen1886BassersdorfI.jpg). Apparently they are not decorative enough for some people and should be tagged amenity=drinking_water. However, the same type of fountain could have a sign saying the water is not potable ( https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brunnen_Waldweg.jpeg, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2014-05-20-Yverdon_(Foto_Dietrich_Michael_Weidmann)_032.JPG); probably these are often only added later for legal reasons when the water is not tested. It does not make sense to me to use different tags for the same kind of feature, so I generally use amenity=fountain for these with appropriate subtags. -Eginhard On Fri, Oct 7, 2022 at 2:45 PM Davidoskky via Tagging < tagging@openstreetmap.org> wrote: > I wish to broadly discuss the definition of fountains and similar objects > that have the objective of delivering water (drinkable or not). > > Everything I wish to discuss in this thread is about man made > constructions that transport water through pipes, I will thus not talk > about wells and such things. > > This is not a proposal, since I first wish to identify the main problems > with what I’m going to suggest. > > The final objective is the deprecation of man_made=water_tap in order to > unify all these features under the same tag. > > > > Background > > The tags pertaining to this category are quite a disorganized mess with a > lot of overlaps. > > The main tag used to indicate a place where drinking water is available is > amenity=drinking_water. This is a very affirmed tag and works very well, > because it provides indications as to where it is possible to find water > for drinking. It is thus immediately useful to the users of the map and it > doesn’t require mappers to go through 5 different tags to indicate that. > > The second most used tag in this category amenity=fountain, this describes > a man made object that provides a flow of water. The flow of water can be > continuous or it can be stopped by a person. The fountain can be decorative > or it may provide some service (such as providing drinking water). It is > unclear whether the majority of the tagged features are decorative > fountains or not, the wiki appears to suggest so but in many countries > there is no distinction among the word for a decorative fountain and a > service one. > > The third relevant tag is man_made=water_tap; this indicates any man made > construction that provides water (drinkable or not) through a tap, thus the > flow of the water can be started and stopped by a person. > > The last relevant tag is man_made=drinking_fountain, this tag has very few > usages and a thread about its deprecation has already been started, thus I > will not discuss about it in detail. > > > > Popularity of these tags: > > 1. > > amenity=drinking_water: 266,535 > 2. > > amenity=fountain: 151,218 > 3. > > man_made=water_tap: 23,678 > 4. > > man_made=drinking_fountain: 656 > > > > Problems with the current tagging scheme > > The current tagging scheme works very well to tag places where people can > find water to drink. This is great since this information is very useful to > map users. > > However, it often fails at describing how the water is delivered or what > is delivering it. amenity=drinking_water is a great generic tag that works > perfectly for this, however more specialized tags should allow to > distinguish different features that are delivering the water. > > This is the objective of man_made=water_tap and amenity=fountain. These > provide a description of the object that delivers the water. Moreover, > these tags can be used to describe both systems that deliver drinking water > or systems that deliver non potable water. This is done mainly by adding > the secondary tag drinking_water=*, even though in many cases > man_made=water_tap coexists with amenity=drinking_water. > > > > amenity=fountain has a subtag fountain=* used to describe the type of > fountain. This subtag is not widely used, but it contains several different > values: > > - > > splash_pad: 1458 > - > > decorative: 950 > - > > nozzle: 885 > - > > bubbler: 319 > - > > drinking: 266 > > Among other values describing the specific name of the type of fountains > (nasone fountains for example are a style of fountains used to provide > drinking water in Rome). > > Thus, currently the tag amenity=fountain is used both to describe > decorative fountains and to describe fountains that provide drinking water > or simple generic nozzles. > > The tag fountain=* is not well defined since it can describe both the use > of the fountain (fountain=drinking) and the particular style of the > fountain (fountain=nasone). > > > > The biggest issue with this is the overlap of the two tags > amenity=fountain and man_made=water_tap. If amenity=fountain was used to > only describe large decorative fountains, which cannot supposedly be > switched off by a common person this wouldn’t be a problem. However, since > this feature can represent nozzles and drinking fountains, some of the > fountains here represented can have a water tap. > > Thus the same feature might be tagged either as man_made=water_tap or > amenity=fountain. The tag amenity=fountain has no way to specify that the > water flow can be started or stopped through a tap. > > Out of these two tags, the most problematic appears to be > man_made=water_tap, since it describes any generic object that has a tap. > That could be anything, thus this tag doesn’t really provide insightful > information about what it is describing, it just provides one of its > properties. > How could this be solved? > > I believe that the best course of action is the deprecation of > man_made=water_tap. This tag is redundant and not descriptive. > > However, the problem with its deprecation is finding a valid alternative > to it. It would make sense to transform it into a secondary value of > amenity=fountain, such as tap=yes. > > However, there is no shared consensus that amenity=fountain should > actually be used to describe non decorative fountains. > > > > I believe there are two courses of action that might be taken, according > to how the community feels about it. > > The first of the two, the one I would personally prefer, is defining > amenity=fountain as any man made structure that provides water through > pipes and is not a sink. This would require a better definition of the > subtag fountain=* and the definition of some sensible values it can assume > by deprecating the several current ones; since this tag is not widely used > this shouldn’t be a problem. > > The second alternative would be the creation of a new tag used to describe > non decorative fountains in order to separate these from amenity=fountain. > This new tag would have a subtag similar to fountain=* to specify the use > of the fountain. > > > > Features to describe > > However we decide to proceed, I feel that there are some particular > properties of this entity that should easily be describable. > > > > > - > > Does it provide drinking water? (through drinking_water=*) > - > > Can the flow of water be stopped through a tap? (New subtag tap=yes) > - > > What is the specific use of this fountain? (provide drinking water, > provide water for irrigation, water for cleaning, water for animals…) > - > > What is the style of this fountain (nasone…) > > > > Another issue that arose was the differentiation of “bubblers” from other > fountains providing drinking water. > > The main difference among the two is the direction of the jet of water, > thus a tag describing such property might be desirable. > > Among other things that this could fix is a better description of > amenity=watering_place, by providing information about whether it is man > made or naturally occurring. > > I’ll wait some comments about this whole ordeal so that we can decide > whether it actually makes sense to apport these modifications to the > tagging scheme and what the amenity=fountain tag should describe. The main > thing I want to push forward for now is the deprecation of > man_made=water_tap in favour of a more descriptive tag yet to be completely > defined. > > _______________________________________________ > Tagging mailing list > Tagging@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging >
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