Talk:Tag:amenity=community centre

I began using amenity=community_centre to tag some public building in my town in France. I used it for multiple usage and i think of using a subkey to made the description more accurate (community_centre=*).

For exemple, in my town a tag :

• amenity=community_centre + community_centre=children, for a public leisure centre for children where children came during holiday to do some activities
• amenity=community_centre + community_centre=elder, for a public neighborhood house used by elder association
• amenity=community_centre + community_centre=christian, for a christian community public house where they meet people, sale books..

What about this proposal ? Padorange 15:10, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, there should be a sub-tag community_centre=*, and amenity=youth_centre should be deprecated in favour of community_centre=youth or community_centre=youth_centre. --Polarbear w (talk) 18:58, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

While the target group can be well represented with community_centre:for=*, we can use community_centre=* for the specific type of the centre itself. Possible values are:

• village_hall for non-religious halls in rural areas
• parish_hall for assembly rooms of religious communities, which are no place of worship
• meeting_room
• youth_centre
• events_venue
• club_home for the facilities of a particular association

etc. --Polarbear w (talk) 23:10, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Confusing - similar to social facility

In the United States, I think we'd called a "social facility:outreach" a community center. But the definition here says it's just a place for events, so while we'd think community center, I think social facility:outreach is the more accurate one, in those cases. --Marion Barry (talk) 21:32, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

I would say the key distinction between an "outreach" social facility and a community centre is that "outreach" is staffed with social workers (nominally) trying to work with some community or population group, while a community centre is not associated with the "social services" (government or private), although "social services" might sometimes borrow space in a pre-existing community centre rather than obtain a separate building for an outreach project.

A typical community centre would make its facilities available to all kinds of local efforts (besides private celebrations), such as fairs, "town hall meetings" (as they are called in the US), speaking engagements (a celebrity or campaigner might stop to do a speech or meet/greet as they travel cross state), meetings of all kinds of associations that wont fit in their members living rooms (homeowners association, birdwatchers association, boy scouts, a newly established church with no permanent place of worship (yet), a local company holding its AGM), fundraisers (especially those that fund the community centre itself), traveling theatrical performances, parties for the community at large (such as a harvest celebration) etc.

Jbohmdk 21:15, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Invalid use of tag

Many of the things now listed on this page are not in any sense Community Centres (comment written by SomeoneElse on 22:15, 10 December 2015 but unsigned at that time - sorry about that)

Hi SomeoneElse, they might not be in your personal perspective, and maybe in the UK scope, but the world is larger and has different facets.

The version of the page up to about version 1177480 was correct. (comment written by SomeoneElse on 22:15, 10 December 2015 but unsigned at that time - sorry about that)

The version you favour focuses on places for "events and festivities", which provides a very narrow view of what a community centre can be. Already the very first 2005 version of the wikipedia page (which was the basis for the OSM amenity proposal) defined a Community centres as sometimes being open for the whole community or for a specialised group within the greater community. Examples given in 2005 include religious and lesbian/gay communities, and explicitly youth clubs. This definition has remained "unfiddled" as you like to say, for 10 years, until today's version, just some homophobic editor has removed the lesbian/gay. The current definition here just follows the wikipedia consensus more closely.

A youth club is a youth club (many were tagged as such), not a community centre. (comment written by SomeoneElse on 22:15, 10 December 2015 but unsigned at that time - sorry about that)

Could you please explain in what sense a youth club is not a community centre with the target group being youngsters? How does it not fit into this category? Meeting rooms for knitting circles and card playing clubs are as well a community centre as those housing a snooker table and a computer cabinet for the younger audience.

Unfortunately it appears that the author of subsequent changes to this page has also made a large number of changes to the database

You overestimate the number that can be changed in policy-compliant, non-mechanical verifications and improvements. Further, a Wiki page is for developing processes and documenting usage.

so that no one will be able to extract "real" community centres (i.e. what local mappers identified as such) any more. (comment written by SomeoneElse on 22:15, 10 December 2015 but unsigned at that time - sorry about that)

The opposite is true. There are 31854 amenity=community_centre today (in contrast of two dozen amenity=youth_club, one dozen remaining), which now can be refined specifying their target groups. The key community_centre:for, modelled after the highly successful social_facility:for, has already 55 supporters since being documented only a few weeks ago. Further, the key community_centre=* is available and being discussed above, for specifying the specific layout of the centre, from village_hall to meeting_room and even youth_club if you think it would be needed beyond the target specification.

The reaction of real, surveying, mappers in the UK to your armchair edits suggests that your view is NOT supported. One of the people who complained to me runs http://osm-nottingham.org.uk/ - that's a real example of OSM data being consumed. Your unannounced data changes broke that, so that data that did show up one day did not the next. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Automated_Edits_code_of_conduct is clear - before you make changes like this you need document and discuss your plans. You did neither.

(comment written by SomeoneElse on 23:03, 18 December 2015 but unsigned at that time - sorry about that)

I also object to the recent changes to this page (and the subsequent remote edits carried out by the same user). The tag amenity=community_centre is long established and previously had a reasonably clear meaning. Why alter a widely used tag and blur its meaning in this way?

The worst thing about these changes is that they risk making it difficult or impossible to use OSM to find real community centres. If searching for a community centre, I don't imagine people are looking for:

• A private space used by a single club or organisation. A community centre, implies a space available for a range of community groups.
• A venue hired out only for weddings or other special events. Events venues are sometimes in opulent buildings and can charge a lot of money, and so don't necessarily have much in common with community centres.
• Social clubs, which are often places where people go to drink or otherwise socialise, usually on an informal basis.

I support reverting this page to an earlier version.

--Will P (talk) 00:38, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

I also find the use of the community_centre tagging scheme very odd for buildings where a club meets in exclusivity (aka a club house). If a building is for use solely by a club, with no other community activities being undertaken there, then community centre seems inappropriate. Yes, a club, or multiple clubs, might meet in a community centre, but I would expect it to have a wider purpose and hold things like community events, e.g. town hall gatherings, and might be hired for private events (e.g. birthday celebrations). A club house, when used exclusively by one club, does not fit with community centre. Casey boy (talk) 11:06, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

amenity=community_hall

I thought about this after encountering the tag. Perhaps it could be what leisure=sports_hall is to leisure=sports_centre? I don't know if this would be as useful or common. -- Kovposch (talk) 08:17, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

No the different hall types are subtagged with community_centre={parish_hall | village_hall | community_hall | etc}. There is no advantage in fragmenting that off. --Polarbear w (talk) 08:55, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

The individual halls, not hall types. Unless you are suggesting community_centre=* on an area without amenity=community_centre is sufficient to express it is an individual community hall, which I could agree. A community center could include multiple halls in theory, so I want to know if this exists. Moreover, there's building=sports_hall specifically for sport hall buildings, but none for community center and community hall buildings. Querying Overpass, most if not all instances of community_centre=* looks to be missing amenity=community_centre only, without expressing an individual community hall. -- Kovposch (talk) 10:57, 23 February 2020 (UTC)