Proposal talk:Landuse=open defecation

Use the standard proposal format

Check out the page Proposal_process and in particular Proposal_process#Creating_a_proposal_page to help improve the formatting. --Jeisenbe (talk) 02:06, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

How should mappers determine when to use this tag?

Please clarify exactly what should be mapped with this new tag. Is going to be added to whole villages, as suggested in this section? "open_defecation=yes was the original proposal. It would have its own sign and could be used as a node or area. Although it may be added to small villages to indicate if it is their primary source of human waste disposal." This would not be a good idea, since it's not possible for mappers to confirm that every house or a majority of houses in a village lack latrines or toilet. But the rest of the page suggests that this tag is supposed to be applied to areas where there are visible signs, in other words, there's human feces exposed on the ground? I assume it wouldn't be applied to a whole area of farmland, but only to a small patch? --Jeisenbe (talk) 02:06, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Subtags

There are a couple of problems with the proposed subtags. It's not good practice to use abbreviations or uppercase letters in tags, so instead of "ODA_" it should be "open_defecation_" or "open_defecation:".

"ODA_Radius_.." "ODA_area_size..." - The first two subtags are not needed - the area can be mapped instead, and this provided the shape and size just from the position of the nodes in the database.

"ODA_survey_date=" - there is already a tag for this, survey:date=* or source:date=* , but it is recommended to add such information to the changeset rather than to individual OSM objects.

"ODA_responsibility=" is unclear. What would this mean, and how would a local mapper in Kenya confirm this information?

"ODA_proposed_solution=" - Unfortunately, this is not appropriate for Openstreetmap. We map real, current features, not opinions, reviews or suggestions, because such information is too subjective for individual mappers to maintain.

"ODA_abandoned=yes/no" - generally features in Openstreetmap should be current, so if an area that was used for open defecation in the past has now been abandoned, and there are no signs "on the ground", then it should be removed from the database. Some mappers use a prefix "abandoned:" like "abandoned:landuse=open_defecation". However, if the area is "disused" - not currently in use, but there are still signs that it was recently used, and perhaps it's still a health hazard because of the presence of decomposing human waste, this could be tagged with disused=yes. It's not necessary to add a prefix to this tag.

ODA_survey_hazardous materials_data_weblink= - I'm not sure what is intended by this tag. Perhaps the existing tag url=* would be sufficient? --Jeisenbe (talk) 02:06, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Considered tags

open_defecation=yes was the original proposal rather than landuse=open_defecation. Both have merits and the difference is subtle. My preference is which ever one makes the Openstreetmap community happy so that I can move forward with it.Central America

Amenity=toilet was rejected because a lot of these Open Defecation Areas are not planned, have no toilet facilities, and if the toilet label was used and someone wanted to go to the toilet and ended up finding an Open Defecation Area (ODA) it is not the same thing.

landuse=open_defecation can be used within other landuse areas. landuse=***** is an important Tag for openstreetmap and with 800 million people using open defecation then there will be substantial use for it.

Is it well defined area?

My main question is it possible to map areas that are relatively well defined? Is it something limited to specific area within town/village or something happening across entire settlement and surrounding with no well defined start/end position? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 11:27, 15 September 2019 (UTC) A good question. I suggest that this would be an area within an urban settlement. Areas that are much larger than buildings are used as Open Defecation Areas, small areas or undefined areas can use a node instead of an area. The suggested tag landcover=open_defecation would seem more suitable. Tagging an entire small village would then use landuse=residential, landcover=open_defecation which would allow you to define the village as users of open_defecation but allow it not to be rendered on the main mapnik tile layer.