Talk:Key:tourist bus

Ambiguity - deprecate this?

Actually, after having done the research about where this tag originated from (basically to mean a coach) and how it is used (in JOSM preset it turns up as a tourist bus), I find this tag is ambiguous. It is not clear if the access restriction on the roads this tag is used on actually applies to tourist buses specifically or to coaches generally.

A short taginfo research reveals that the most instances where this tag is used is garbage anyway. For example, a driveway where someone just checked/unchecked all the access restrictions there are in the JOSM preset. That means it is almost impossible to find out after-the-fact how this tag was understood. So we must assume that tourist_bus is sometimes used to mean tourist bus, sometimes used to mean a long-distance bus for travelling from city to city (=coach). --Westnordost (talk) 20:39, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't see an issue in Josm naming the preset "tourist_bus". From my understanding, the terms tourist bus and coach are synonymous. If you believe this tag is not clear (a concern I do not share) and you want to establish a new name for it, please make a proposal rather than discouraging the use of the established tag on its definition page. I would be interested in learning how to do a "short taginfo research" and be able to see that "most instances" of this tag are "garbage". How many of the more than 6000 instances have you been looking at? --Dieterdreist (talk) 22:58, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

btw, as nobody replied here on the question to deprecate the key you decided to just do it?

If I were to invent a new tag for bus vehicles, my choice would be "motorbus". --Dieterdreist (talk) 23:00, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

I only took random samples: Search for the tag on overpass, then click on various instances where it is set. It is enough to get a rough overview but not enough to deprecate a tag, sure. But I don't see that I'd have deprecated this tag, I just documented the ambiguity (bus for tourist purposes vs literal translation of Italian word for coaches), see my initial comment here.

Regarding "motorbus" - why that? A motorbus is a bus with a motor, so basically any bus nowadays is a motorbus, see e.g. "motorcar" -> "car" or first line in wikipedia article: "A bus (archaically also omnibus,[1] multibus, motorbus, autobus) " --Westnordost (talk) 23:24, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Basically, as I understand it, you think that tourist_bus and coach would be synomous, right? I would also say: yes, this is what this tag was intended for. However, the tag itself is unfortunately ambiguous, and so the preset in JOSM also called this vehicle type "Tourist bus" even though any intercity/coach bus (de:Reisebus) was meant. This is the problem with this tag. The "coach" tag is what this tag should have been. --Westnordost (talk) 23:28, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

You certainly discouraged its use, despite it being documented clearly on the access page (meaning a vehicle class), it does not matter for the definition how the key name was found in 2011, what matters is what people use this tag for. WRT "motorbus", it would fit well into motorcar and motorbike, and would be a distinctive term for the vehicle class, as opposed to "bus" meaning bus=yes on bus lanes (buses as psv). "motorbus" does not suffer from the problem "coach" and "tourist bus" suffer (describing a certain type of bus), so it seems better suited to express the generic vehicle class of busses.--Dieterdreist (talk) 23:45, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

I agree it is rather ambiguous. In addition, I find the name rather unintuitive, as the first thing that comes to mind when I hear "tourist bus" would be a tour bus which shows tourists the sights of the city. --Popball (talk) 18:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

red links

[1] Why is it ok to have red links? They look ugly. If someone creates a page, then they can create links. In the next twenty years no one is going to create a page like tourist_bus=yes, because it can be described here. If the page is becoming longer, then it's ok to create separate page, like Tag:bicycle=designated with a lot of examples. But I see no reason for these red links here, we're not Wikipedia. The way I see it: one should first describe the values on the key page. If that page gets too big, then we move the information about individual value to the appropriate tag page. Besides, these values are well described under Key:access which I added to the list. maro21 20:59, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

red links are perfectly normal part of wikis. And individual pages for such values are still useful Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 10:56, 12 April 2021 (UTC)