Tag:man_made=telephone_box
 man_made = telephone_box
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| Description |
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A telephone box (also those which have another usage meanwhile) as themselves, no matter of their current function/usage or content. 
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| Group: man made |
| Used on these elements |
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| Useful combination |
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| See also |
| Status: in use |
| Tools for this tag |
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 | This tag was created without discussion. Of course, you can consider using it, but please be aware that some other tags like covered=booth or just booth=yes are in use, too. man_made=telephone_box was created to have a main-tag for any kind of telephone box, no matter whether it's used as such, unused or repurposed. |
Usage
A tag for identifying any telephone boxes as themselves. Concerning this tag, no matter of what their actual function/usage or content is. Some telephone boxes do still contain a public phone, many others now have new functions, and others may stand empty. man_made=telephone_box is for identifying all of these (former) phone boxes, as a generic main tag. The problem was/is until now, that there seems to be no real main tag for telephone boxes, so this tag was created (without discussion).
man_made=telephone_box describes every kind of telephone box which is still there, even when they're unused, contain books meanwhile or something else. Please note that this tag describes the telephone box only. For the content of the phone box, there may be other tags needed additionally. For example, a public phone is amenity=telephone and a public bookcase would be amenity=public_bookcase. If the phone box is used as one of these, these tags have to be added, either on the same node on which man_made=telephone_box is tagged, or, if the phone box would be represented by a way, you can put a node into it and add the proper tag to it.
Controversials
Especially when there's a public phone which is covered by a telephone box, the tag covered=booth has been added to amenity=telephone nodes until now, to show that the phone is covered by a booth. But there are some issues with this kind of tagging, because some people say, covered=* should be and stay a boolean tag with the values "yes" and "no". Others say that covered=booth isn't a main tag. covered=* is an additional tag which shows whether an (other!) object is covered or not (a street, a railway track,...). covered=booth refers to something else, like the key covered=* always does. So covered=* is not purposed to be a standalone tag, for example for tagging unused phone boxes. But then how to tag a generic telephone-box, maybe without any telephone? You can use disused:amenity=telephone or removed:amenity=telephone or something to show that there was a public phone which is gone. But this says nothing about whether the phone's box might still be there or not. Even if you tag for example disused:amenity=telephone together with covered=booth, it's not clear that the phone box is still there. And what if the phone is gone? It isn't "disused" then. It is "removed". So there might stay covered=booth, but then, again there isn't any main tag anymore which describes an object.
And what if a repurposed phone box is placed in a new location? removed:amenity=telephone + covered=booth wouldn't work in this case, because removed:amenity=telephone would be wrong then, because at the location where the node is, there maybe never have been a public phone.
And as said, covered=booth isn't a main tag. It describes that something else is a covered by a booth. But it doesn't describe a booth.
For public bookcases, we do have public_bookcase:type=phone_box. Bus this also doesn't solve the problem. This tag refers to public bookcases only, so its too one-sided. You still do not have the possibility to tag a phone box as itself.
Using booth=*
We do have the tag booth=* which is in use already. But this key is rather used to describe the model of the phone box. And what if you don't know the model of the box? Would it be booth=yes then? booth=* is not a main key either. Also, it doesn't "group" telephone booths to any category of objects (amenities, man made objects, ...). A bench is also amenity=bench and not bench=yes.
booth=* is for the type of booth, it's like amenity=shelter for generic shelter and then tagging shelter_type=*.