Talk:Tag:amenity=canteen

Difference between this and fast_food=cafeteria

Hey @Rtfm: How is this any different or better then fast_food=cafeteria which has 10 times more uses? By creating a Wiki page for every possible tag and setting all their status to "De Facto" without doing the proper research on more widely used (probably better) alternatives, your just contributing to tag fragmentation. It's pretty clear that your trying to push certain tags at the cost of others. Since you didn't list fast_food=cafeteria as an alternative in the "see also" section or even mention it anywhere in the article. Although, you where fine with listing amenity=canteen in the fast_food=cafeteria article as alternative to it. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:51, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Hey Adamant, I don't get why a canteen should be a "subcategory" of fast food. It could also be a self-service restaurant. I consider it deprecative to those canteen proprietors who deliver a better quality than the average restaurant. For the users it's at least misleading (and by the way it's hard to find in the wiki). I documented this tag shortly before I had to leave the house as of an appointment. So please feel free to improve it. user:rtfm Rtfm (talk) 16:50, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

The only instance I can think of where they are self-service restaurants is in the case of hospitals where the main cafeteria isn't "active" at night, but you can still get pre-made sandwiches etc out of vending machines. I would argue that still counts as fast-food though. Since the wiki says "Fast food is for a place concentrating on very fast counter-only service and take-away food. Someone is still in the back preparing it, they just aren't bringing it to your table. Otherwise, in those cases if it's a straight "amenity" I.E. "describing useful and important facilities" wouldn't the "facility", in the case the vending machines, just be mapped separately? Which then wouldn't change the nature of the fact its a normal, fast food, cafeteria during regular business hours?

To me it's the difference between tagging the place for the purpose of showing its use, to provide "counter-only service and take-away food" compared to your tagging it as a pure amenity. Which only imports that it is a "sit-down facility." In that case though, I'd argue your essentially just tagging an "empty space" within "dining areas" that usually serve many purposes beyond food being eaten or prepared there. For instance plenty of people at my local college go to the "cafeteria" just to play Magic the Gathering or take a break between classes. In those cases if your tagging based on "use" instead of "function" they could be tagged as social facilities, community centers, or any other number of things. In other words a "canteen" as an amenity isn't really a thing. Compared to say something like amenity=bench. But it does fit the definition of a fast food place. Even in cases where people aren't using it as that. My local McDonald's doesn't stop being a fast food restaurant because I loiter around inside it for a while. Mapping "dining areas" as canteens though would mean that the eating areas of any fast food restaurant out there could then be mapped as amenity=canteen because they are all "formal eating places." which is just wrong IMO. Hopefully that makes sense. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:01, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Also, we don't tag things based on the quality of the product provided there or how someone might view their established as low quality because we choose to tag it as a fast food place. Obviously. It shouldn't even have to be stated. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:03, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

I didn't get your points regarding whether you may also just sit around, that's mainly the case with cafeterieas ? All the "food shops" are currently in the "amenity category" (as an own "main category"). There are probably different types of "canteen", but it's possible to add info about their nature with additional tags (drink, access, cuisine etc.). Fast food is defined like this : "hot food, such as hamburgers and chips/fries, that is served very quickly and can be taken away to be eaten in the street" or  Fast_food "Fast food is a type of mass-produced food designed for commercial resale and with a strong priority placed on "speed of service" versus other relevant factors involved in culinary science". Where the "other relevant factors" might be a detail to be discussed. And I think mappers can't avoid to check whether something has the one or the other "quality" in terms of "measure the conformance quality, or degree to which the product/service was produced correctly"  Quality_(business) (means whether it fits in one ot the other OSM Wiki "category"). There are also restaurants which offer lunch:specials=* (mass produced, speed of service), but I wouldn't call them a canteen or fast food. And there are cafes which switch to be a bar in the evening (probably selling food during the day). The question is whether the "main category" deserves an own "amenity" / "shop" tag or if it's a subcategory of something. The other extreme would be to call everything amenity=food and express everything else with "subtags" (lunch=yes, self-service=yes, fast_food=no, cuisine=regional). user:rtfm Rtfm (talk) 10:07, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

My point is, the cafeteria is a specific object inside of a larger fast food place. For instance, my local college has a "cafeteria" where the place that you buy the food is in a side room to the "cafeteria" area. In that case, I would tag the whole building, the "cafeteria" as amenity=fast_food, and add fast_food=cafeteria as a sub-tag (in this case it's an attribute or sub-type. Not the places main purpose. To sell fast food). Tagging it as an higher level amenity without it being amenity=fast_food doesn't work in this case IMO because the "cafeteria is the main room where people sit and eat (an object), not the whole building (large back room where people cook the food, etc etc) where as the whole place is a "fast food joint." It's the difference between being a sub category versus a main category. It's clearly how the OSM community sees it to since amenity=fast_food massively out weighs amenity=canteen. It seems your the one eating out of spoon here and circumventing the will of the people by pushing a much lesser used tag (same goes for the HGV thing btw). It really is true that when you point a finger at someone else there is more fingers pointing back at you.  

Also "I think mappers can't avoid to check whether something has the one or the other "quality" in terms of "measure the conformance quality, or degree to which the product/service was produced correctly." I'm not really what that has to do with anything. Again, quality has zero correlation in how we tag things or otherwise. See "Subjective opinions, reviews or evaluations of places or businesses are not verifiable by other mappers, because other observers might have a different experience." In the verifiability article. I have almost 15,000, a lot of them business POI's) and Know where have I ever seen anyone ever tag a restaurant as fast food or not based on "quality." Maybe it happens a few times here or there, but we, or at least I (and 99.99% of other people here), recommend one tag in favor of another based on a few outliers (in most cases that also goes for the reverse). If we wen't purely off of tagging numbers this map etc would be worthless trash. I'm sure you know that. Also, there's no way to prove the intents or reasoning of other mappers. So, it's a worthless metric to use right out of the gate. This is a cartographic, linguistic, and computer science. Not a religion, psychological system, tea leaf reading, form of geomancy, or any other similar mumbo jumbo. Its not a pure democracy where we simply go with pure tagging numbers as if they count as intentional votes in favor of certain tags either. At least that's how I see it. See  Polling is not a substitute for discussion. Honestly, I'm probably as irritated by the discussion etc here as you are sometimes, I have much better things to do, but unfortunately that's the process. Either we work inside the rules, create our own OSM where anyone can do whatever they want (Which wouldn't really work), or just shove off and do better things with our time (I'm seriously leaning that way). --Adamant1 (talk) 21:27, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Btw, have you ever considered that if literally everyone on here has a problem with what your doing, that maybe what your doing might be the problem and not them? --Adamant1 (talk) 21:40, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Definition of this tag compared to other food service features?

How should mappers decide to use this tag instead of amenity=restaurant, amenity=fast_food or amenity=cafe?

The current description is "generally formal eating places with sit-down facilities selling full meals with self-service. A Canteen is a type of food service location in which there is little or no waiting staff table service." So it's clear that there is no table service, but this is also true for many amenity=cafe features and most amenity=fast_food features. It also might be true of a buffet restaurant tagged amenity=restaurant, for example all-you-can eat places like "Hometown Buffet" in the USA, which provide full meals.

On the linked Wikipedia article, the word "canteen" seems to be a synonym for "cafeteria" (US English), which is usually a facility in a school, military base, hospital, office, or a department store, which serves a limited choice of meals for people who work or study or shop at that location. This also matched the Oxford Dictionaries definition of "canteen - a place where food and drink are served in a factory, a school, etc". Is that what this tag means, or is it more like a Latin American "cafeteria" which is more similar to an amenity=cafe?

What is the distinguishing feature of a "canteen" or "cafeteria" according to how this tag has been used so far? --Jeisenbe (talk) 06:14, 28 December 2019 (UTC)