amenity=embassy is deprecated, show office=diplomatic or diplomatic=consulate with the flag symbol instead

[elumbella]

Expected behavior

Diplomatic offices such as embassies, consulates etc (see office=diplomatic for full list) without the amenity=embassy tag should be rendered with the flag symbol

Actual behavior

Only amenity=embassy is rendered, however, this tag is deprecated

Links and screenshots illustrating the problem

https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/6665879459 is rendered, but tagged with the deprecated amenity=embassy
https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2953707091 is not rendered, but tagged correctly

(edit: corrected first link)

[imagico]

Right now there are 10k amenity=embassy, 3.1k office=diplomatic and 3.1k diplomatic=embassy (if other non-embassy diplomatic offices should be rendered here would be a different question).

I don't think this is enough to indicate a clear adoption of a different tagging yet but it might well be on the way of getting there so it is certainly a good idea to keep an eye on this.

What we could consider i think is removing the rendering of the old tagging before we actually start rendering the new tagging. That would essentially mean adopting a position of neutrality because the old tag has ceased to be the universally accepted method of mapping while the new tagging has not (yet) been universally adopted as a replacement.

[kocio-pl]

I would start with writing about rendering ideas on tagging list before making any decision.

[polarbearing]

The office-proposal was voted positively with a good ratio in Nov 2018, however it said to "deprecate the amenity=embassy tag over a period of time". There is a bit a tug-of-war to put the red label on the amenity page, since.

Question is how long is the period of time, half a year is certainly quite short.

Why would we render none of them for a while, @imagico? Why not render both of them for a while?

Non-embassy diplomatic offices could be rendered as any other office=*, if they aren't already.

[jeisenbe]

All `office=` values are rendered with a dark blue circular marker and a text label currently.

[imagico]

Why would we render none of them for a while, @imagico? Why not render both of them for a while?

Because that would give feedback indicating both is equally OK - this kind of tagging proliferation and creation of synonyms we don't want to support.

Note this is not a waiting time question, for us the actual adoption of a tag by mappers is the key. In the past when tagging conventions changed (like highway=ford to ford=yes or wood=* to leaf_type=*) we were very conservative in adopting this (due to technical constraints mostly of course). We don't have to and should not wait until a previously used tag has gone completely out of use but we definitely should consider carefully the degree of adoption of a tagging scheme before endorsing it by rendering it.

As said i would be in favor of removing rendering of amenity=embassy right now but i think adoption of a new tagging is not broad enough to render it (and there has not even been a suggestion on how exactly anyway - the whole point of the new tagging is to be better differentiated so a one-to-one replacement is not possible). As @jeisenbe pointed out a generic office dot is currently rendered as an office=* catchall so this would already go beyond the level of neutrality here.

[jeisenbe]

@elumbella - it would be good to open an issue at other map styles which would be affected by this change. The most important would be the HDM style, which is also on the main openstreetmap.org page and currently renders embassies, since it is focused on features which are important to NGOs and humanitarian workers. See https://github.com/hotosm/HDM-CartoCSS/issues

I would recommend waiting a few more months to see how things develop. The number of embassies has stopped going up. The trend line is about 20% to 25% below where it would have been expected to have reached by now:

The number of office=diplomatic + diplomatic=embassy but not amenity=embassy is currently 979 - https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Mic
There are also 414 diplomatic=consulate without amenity=embassy now: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Mib
But there are still 7643 amenity=embassy without diplomatic=embassy or office=diplomatic - https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Mie

Changing the rendering of amenity=embassy to match office might be a smaller first step, which would not completely eliminate rendering?

EDIT: also, not all office=diplomatic have a subtag; there are 671 of these currently: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Mii.

[bhousel]

What we could consider i think is removing the rendering of the old tagging before we actually start rendering the new tagging. That would essentially mean adopting a position of neutrality because the old tag has ceased to be the universally accepted method of mapping while the new tagging has not (yet) been universally adopted as a replacement.

@imagico, You have an interesting idea of "neutrality". Break embassy rendering for everyone? 😆

[jeisenbe]

iD is already switching amenity=embassy to office=diplomatic + diplomatic=embassy if I understand this correctly: openstreetmap/iD@ae8f2c2

JOSM has a ticket open, so amenity=embassy is still the supported feature at this time: https://josm.openstreetmap.de/ticket/17562 - probably we should wait for JOSM to make the change as well?

[jeisenbe]

Break embassy rendering for everyone?

The tag office=diplomatic is already rendered with a marker and a text label with the name, but there is no specific icon - it's rendered like other offices.

[imagico]

@bhousel - if you want to change my mind an actual argument could be helpful...

[tomass]

amenity=embassy is hugely more popular against a ridiculous number of office=diplomatic, and the thing that somebody has nothing better to do and tagged it as "deprecated" in wiki does not mean (according to actual data in the database) that actual mappers agree that it is "deprecated".
This is just one more pointless re-tagging wasting time and giving absolutely no advantage.

[jeisenbe]

@tomass it's better to discuss the tagging issues on the Tagging mailing list, or make a formal proposal - though you should look through the long discussions about the previous proposal at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Proposed_features/office%3Ddiplomatic to understand how the new tags developed.

Also see https://josm.openstreetmap.de/ticket/17562 which will have more influence and will probably happen sooner than changes we make here.

[tomass]

There should be a mandatory requirement to have mapped at least 100000 objects or even more before proposing any change of tagging. As currently people who do not have practical experience propose pointless re-tagging and other people who do not have practical experience push such proposals through.

[elumbella]

What we could consider i think is removing the rendering of the old tagging before we actually start rendering the new tagging. That would essentially mean adopting a position of neutrality because the old tag has ceased to be the universally accepted method of mapping while the new tagging has not (yet) been universally adopted as a replacement.

What about rendering office=diplomatic additionally to amenity=embassy? That would be a compromise for now, wouldn't it? Otherwise we can also wait until all editors have adopted the new tagging scheme (looking at you, JOSM) and make a hard switch (stop rendering the latter and start rendering the former). However your suggestion is to not render any of them at all? Or did I misunderstand?

Since office=diplomatic has a few subcatgories (embassy, consulate, liaison) one might also think about a more differentiated rendering for these subcategories. But that's a different story, just a quick thought.

@jeisenbe Thanks for the in-depth analysis. It seems that the old amenity=embassy is still in heavy use. The wiki also recommends against automatic re-tagging of those (I imagine that not all amenity=embassy's are actually embassies but also consulates etc). So we will be stuck with plenty of those for a while. Stopping rendering of those seems a bit premature to me. However, adding rendering for the new tagging scheme should be considered IMHO.

[elumbella]

There should be a mandatory requirement to have mapped at least 100000 objects or even more before proposing any change of tagging. As currently people who do not have practical experience propose pointless re-tagging and other people who do not have practical experience push such proposals through.

This is a completely different discussion, @tomass. This tagging scheme has been accepted last year. If you're not content with this you can always challenge the proposal.

[kocio-pl]

I think we should render both tags for now, since things are in the state of flux and removing old tag now would be unexpected and avoidable disservice to the users. Speaking from experience, any sane migration takes time, overlaps and compromises to make things run as smooth as possible and not enrage users. Moreover https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dembassy#How_to_map encourages just adding new tags. We can choose when we would like to stop rendering old tags and announce it to the rest of community, so migration ends at some point and it's not hanging forever, on the other hand.

It is crucial to see the whole process of migration, not just separate decisions.

[wvanderp]

This is beginning to be a bit of a chicken and egg problem. The map will not update because the tagging/data is not there yet. On the other side there are people warning me to not remove amenity=embassy because the render will not recognize it.

So, to contribute to this conversation I have some data.

query	result
amenity=embassy	7907
amenity=embassy without office=diplomatic	6692
amenity=embassy + office=diplomatic	1215
amenity=embassy + office=diplomatic + diplomatic=embassy	762
office=diplomatic	5795
office=diplomatic + diplomatic=embassy	2769
office=diplomatic + diplomatic=consulate	927
office=diplomatic only	1272
office=diplomatic + diplomatic=embassy without amenity=embassy	2007

The data shows that amenity=embassy is still very much in use. But compared to the previous data comment this is slowly changing.

amenity=embassy without office=diplomatic changed 7643 to 6692. better

office=diplomatic + diplomatic=embassy without amenity=embassy rises from 979 to 2007better

office=diplomatic without an diplomatic tag rises from 671 to 1272worse

Another thing that is apparent from the data is the misuse of the amenity=embassy tag. There are 1215 objects that have the amenity=embassy and office=diplomatic. But only 762 are tagged with diplomatic=embassy. So, either somebody forgot to add diplomatic=embassy or there are consulates tagged with the embassy tag.

While the data suggest that it is not the time to drop the rendering of amenity=embassy. It is suggesting that it is time to at least add office=diplomatic + diplomatic=embassy with the same rendering as amenity=embassy. Because 20% of the embassies are not rendered in the current style. With id suggesting removing amenity=embassy this number will only increase.

edit: had a bounding box on the data. this is now for the whole world

[jeisenbe]

All office= values, including office=diplomatic, are rendered with a dark blue circular marker and a text label of the name, currently. No office= features have a special icon currently, but they are rendered.

[imagico]

Thanks @wvanderp for the data. As previously indicated we do not want to render newly created synonyms here so rendering office=diplomatic + diplomatic=embassy as a synonym for amenity=embassy will likely not find approval.

As also said: Ideas how to render office=diplomatic in a differentiated fashion would be welcome. Also personally i would be in support of removing rendering of amenity=embassy right now because it is clearly not the universally accepted tagging any more and as @jeisenbe says office=diplomatic is already rendered in a generic fashion providing some feedback.

It is also quite clear from the dynamics of tagging numbers that a full adoption of the office=diplomatic scheme is likely. So someone should consider how to render this because the solution to render office=diplomatic with a generic office dot but rendering office=diplomatic + diplomatic=embassy in a completely different way like current amenity=embassy would be confusing.

[kocio-pl]

personally i would be in support of removing rendering of amenity=embassy right now because it is clearly not the universally accepted tagging any more

Did you consider how proper migration process works, especially that for some time both systems (old and new) should be supported to achieve smooth migration path?

[imagico]

Don't know what you consider a "proper migration process" to be but we have documented goals, established practice as well as negative counter-examples all advising clearly against introducing the rendering of new synonyms for existing tags. I know you have different preferences as indicated in past discussions (like #2548) but as it has been demonstrated back then that there is no consensus for such changes. So a change introducing a distinct rendering of office=diplomatic + diplomatic=embassy will most likely only find support if it is combined with or preceded by a change removing rendering of amenity=embassy.

[kocio-pl]

So, do you consider abrupt change being fair for the users? Did you consider encouraging wild automated edits this way? Was there any documentation, consensus or anything on this way of migration?

IIRC, on the contrary - there was a lengthy process for migration deprecated tags. Also the documentation says:

The amenity=embassy tag has been deprecated, and it should be phased out over time.

This certainly does sound to me like considering passing some time, not pushing people to hurry up.

[imagico]

I am not having the same discussion as in #2548 and elsewhere all over again - the OSM wiki is not authoritative for our decision making here, we look at how mappers actually use tags. We have an established practice how to do things, we have documented goals and we have a responsibility towards the OSM community supporting them in consistent use of tags and not supporting meaningless proliferation of tagging.

I pointed out clearly above that what will eventually likely be needed is a concept how to render the new tagging system in an intuitive form. Sidestepping this by lobbying for ignoring this need and just pretending the new tagging to be a synonym for the old one and that it would be a good idea to render it as such is non-constructive.

[kocio-pl]

the OSM wiki is not authoritative for our decision making here

But it clearly states the intended process, which you propose to ignore - not something I would call "responsible for OSM community". And if wiki is not anything special, then why do you rely on deprecation note or whatever wiki says at all? It lacks the consistency.

We have an established practice how to do things

When was such deprecation done in an abrupt manner, as you propose?

[imagico]

If you want to discuss established practice and policy please open a separate issue.

[wvanderp]

If I understand it right it is the policy to only render synonyms in very rare cases. So, I see two ways forward:

• we wait untill Amenity=embassy has been totally replaced with the office diplomatic tagging scheme and then the same visuals can be used.

• Or new visuals are developed for the office diplomatic schema.

Is my conclusion correct. Are the any other paths forward? Did I miss any traditions?

[elumbella]

• Or new visuals are developed for the office diplomatic schema.

According to the wiki, there are three subkeys for office = diplomatic:

• diplomatic = embassy
• diplomatic = consulate
• diplomatic = liaison

IMHO, each of these could have the symbol for what amenity = embassy has right now, which is the flag symbol.

I have no clue on how to distinguish them visually as most people will have trouble distinguishing these types of diplomatic offices anyway (I have just learned about liaisons during this discussion). Obviously, there is a difference, but most of these have their specific descriptor in the name (e.g. "Embassy of the United Sates of America", "Consulate of Argentina").

So it might be appropriate to just render office = diplomatic with the flag icon. Hence, I'm no visual artist or designer, so maybe someone else can come up with distinguishable and recognizable visual representations.

[jragusa]

For your information: office=diplomatic (7561 times) is now slightly more used than amenity=embassy (6335 times)