Proposal talk:Discourage tourism=gallery

Types of museum

I find it good. You should write a page for museum=*, because there are other types of museum. See taginfo[1]

Link prior discussion

I find it strange that someone would create a proposal like this, without first discussing the matter over on Talk:Tag:tourism=gallery.

-- Harry Wood (talk) 22:31, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

The tagging list tends to be the place where most discussion finds place nowadays. I agree I could have created a link on the tourism=gallery page to that discussion though. Math1985 (talk) 22:47, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Tag for an art gallery... after 8 years

For some reason it took 8 years for us to finally document a tag for an art gallery. Proposed features/Art gallery was finally accepted in 2014. Now you want remove it again? In my opinion that would be a disappointing step backwards.

It seems there's a language related hang-up, but as a native english speaker it seems clear to me that art galleries deserve their own top level tag alongside museums. These are not the same thing. Some art galleries are called "museum of art", which creates confusion. But it's actually simple. If it shows lots of art, it's an art gallery. If it shows old stuff other than art, topic-focussed exhibits e.g. science, anything other than art, then it's a museum. It's actually far more clear-cut that some of our other top-level tag distinctions e.g. the difference between shop=supermarket and shop=convenience.

Given we lacked a clearly documented art gallery tag for such a long time throughout mapping history, it's not surprising that these big institutions have all been mapped already and the stats show that process of re-tagging them with the better tag is taking a while (not helped by a language hang-up I suppose)

-- Harry Wood (talk) 22:31, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

There have been two discussions on this topic so far on the tagging list: here and here. I'm about to start a third one. It doesn't seem many people are sharing your point of view. Math1985 (talk) 22:47, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

While in natural language terms "museum" and "gallery" are sometimes used interchangeably (and it might lead to confusion when tagging them), here in OSM we can give anything more strict definition. Museums usually have both exhibitions and archives, sometimes - even own restoration departments. Also, they usually don't sell anything from their collections. Galleries usually don't have large archives and other related facilities, their main purpose is to exhibit and sell objects of art. We can, for sure, go for more elaborate classification with separate tags for presence of archive, restoration facility and for art dealership function, but in this specific case it will probably lead to even more confusion. (Please, keep in mind, that I'm usually strongly discouraging any "complex meaning" tagging schemes, but not in this case, so I have a reason for that.) So, my point is we have to give better definition to museums and galleries and use them together instead of merging them. --BushmanK (talk) 16:45, 10 February 2016 (UTC)