Talk:Key:seats

Meaning?

This key is quite abundant, certainly due to an editor template written by a funny developer, but it seems useless, because nobody can really say what it means. The definition says "number of seats on a bench", but a bench usually has only one seat. It's only the width=* that varies. Most mappers misuse the seats=* key to tag the number of persons who fit on the bench, but this should really go into capacity=* because that's what it's meant for. All over this, that number can not be objectively determined. How many persons fit on the bench depends on their age and stature, and on their readiness to squeeze. And most people put their bags on the bench too, thus decreasing the space available to others. --Fkv (talk) 23:35, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Agree! I find capacity:seats=* also more relevant even though it has the word "seats" as postfix. Also it follows the well established key capacity=*, so more compliant to a common tag scheme. We should sort this out since, those two count as a duplication. --SHARCRASH (talk) 17:06, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

If it were for compliance, I would just use capacity=* for the number of persons fitting on the bench. Let's take a typical tourism=picnic_site as an example:

picnic_site

Image has been replaced for copyright reasons. Something B (talk) 23:57, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Here we've got 2 seats, each seat with a capacity of 2, which gives a total capacity=4. --Fkv (talk) 12:33, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Expanding definition

If there isn't anyone that has a problem with it, I'd like to expand the definition of the tag to include other things besides just benches. For instance to movie theaters, restaurants, bars, stadiums, etc. As there's zero reason it shouldn't also apply to those things and the alternative, capacity:seats, doesn't make sense. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:23, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree, because seats=* is the number of physical units while capacity=* is the total number of persons the facility is designed for. See example above. Every theatre etc. has seats as well as a capacity. They may be equal, but the capacity is bigger than the number of seats on benches as well as in theatres with standing room. --Fkv (talk) 12:45, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the opinion Fkv.

You explained it better then I did ;) @Jeisenbe:, I'm wondering your thought on this since your editing the article.

His latest edit indicates that he keeps ignoring this discussion. --Fkv (talk) 20:18, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

This tag is really only used with benches current: over 98% of uses are with amenity=bench (compare https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/11Yl to https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/seats#combinations), and unfortunately it is not used to mean the number of chairs or "seats", but rather it is used like capacity to mean how many people can fit on the bench (probably because iD has this as an option in the editor). There is another tag capacity=* for the number of persons who can fit in a feature, which is quite common and probably would have been better. And there is a rare tag capacity:seats=* for the number of seats in a school or other feature - though it's only been used in a handful of places, mostly in Haiti: see https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/11Yj and mostly with amenity=school - https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/11Yk

Is there a reason to prefer using seats=* for those kinds features instead of capacity=* or capacity:seats=*? --Jeisenbe (talk) 02:05, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

No. Can anyone stop iD Developers from polluting OSM with wrong data? When they get that fixed in the editor, we can start thinking about fixing the data (e.g. by renaming existing seats=* to capacity=* on objects where no capacity=* tag is present). --Fkv (talk) 02:39, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

separated by armrests?

The text "This tag should only be used if the bench is separated into a specific number of individual seats, for example, by armrests" was added last month. This seems to be made up by that wiki editor and doesn't match the examples at the top of this page. SomeoneElse (talk) 12:50, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

I've fixed the wording to make it clear that the vague guess meaning is what the key typically refers to, even though separated seats would indeed be more verifiable. JesseFW (talk) 23:52, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

General count key

There should be a general count key for bollards, steps, seats, etc. instead of each one needing a custom one to eventually be approved. Jidanni (talk) 15:08, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Key:count has over 2,000 uses already, but one problem with it is that in various cases there are multiple possible things to count (i.e. the discussion above about whether seats is estimated or separated), so we'd need a way to clarify which one is being counted anyway. JesseFW (talk) 17:23, 21 November 2022 (UTC)