Talk:Tag:amenity=social club
Current usage of tag, proposal to deprecate
The wiki page describes what a British social club is and how the tag is supposed to be used, but not how it is actually used. So I did some research:
| Tagging | Uses in UK | Uses in other countries |
|---|---|---|
| amenity=social_club | 381 | 93 |
| leisure=social_club | 232 | 233 |
| club=social | 147 | 291 |
| social_facility=social_club | 13 | 153 |
| club=social_club | 21 | 18 |
By looking at the names of the individual clubs, I tried to get a rough picture whether each a "working men's club" is meant, or another type of club.
amenity=social_club
- Usage in UK are mostly working mens clubs, many have "Working Mens Club" or "British Legion" in their name.
- For other countries, all kinds of club=* clubs. American Legion seems to rather be a lobby organization.
leisure=social_club
- Most usages in the UK have "social club" in their name, some conservative clubs, some working mens clubs. Not sure if these are working mens club
- For other countries, all kinds of club=* clubs.
club=social
- In UK, some appear to be working mens club, but most have names like parish club, conservative club, social club, labour club and progressive club. Are these working mens clubs as well?
- For other countries, all kinds of club=* clubs.
social_facility=social_club
- Too few usages in UK to make a statement about usage.
- For other countries, all kinds of club=* clubs.
club=social_club Too few usages in UK and other countries to make a statement about usage.
The big picture seems to be that any of these tags is used for any kind of clubs, "social" being a very weak classification of the type of club (any club is "social" in some way) in other countries than the UK. For the UK, the tags seem to mean rather the "working mens clubs" as described in this wiki article, most considerably with amenity=social_club - for the others I am not sure ("conservative club", etc), feedback from a British person would be nice.
Anyway, the big picture is that the understanding of the "social club" is different in the UK OSM community than in the rest of the OSM community. Adding on top of this, even the English Wikipedia article about social clubs describes club=*, not the working mens club described in this article. This makes this tag a somewhat poor naming choice due to ambiguity.
My understanding after reading this article is, is that "social clubs" aka "working mens clubs" in the UK are very similar to pubs. So then, if it is so close to a pub, why make life hard for ourselves and give it a top-level tag? I propose to simply tag such places amenity=pub + something like club=working_mens_club. You know, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
The only way I see to solve this ambiguity is to move away from at the social_club tag (any of the above mentioned ones) towards a tag that is not ambiguous and either classifies it as a "something like a pub" or another type of club.
--Westnordost (talk) 22:00, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
- One of the big problems with the wikipedia article is that this uses a very broad definition of social club which is more of less synonymous with club. If you also want to include a problematic tag look at amenity=social_centre which is so braodly spefified in US terms and covers anything from learned societies to professional organisations. I linked to the wikipedia "Working Man's Club" article because it provides a good descirption of a common type of British social club. Conservative & Liberal clubs are another type, but are clearly social clubs in the well-understood meaning in the UK. leisure=social_club is also widespread in the UK and is largely used in a synonymous way. A club=social_club tag is also fine, but given the breadth of the wikipedia description not adequate on its own. The issue is that any attempt to deprecate this involves removing significant information from OSM or a complex re-tagging operation which in practice would involve resurvey (which is why I wrote this page in the first case, because iD is already doing this). The whole point of using amenity is to place it in a name space close to pub & bar. Virtually all other uses of social club belong in the club name space. SK53 (talk) 16:34, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
- So, conservative and liberal clubs are also clubs that are in effect like semi-public pubs, just like working mens clubs?
- Of course, a deprecation of this (/these) tags involves a resurvey to find out whether each particular club is a kind of semi-public pub (social / working mens club) or another type of club. So, the tag can not be "upgraded" automatically because the reason for it being deprecated would be that it is ambiguous. See f.e. landuse=farm or surface=cobblestone. But complex, it wouldn't be.
- Anyway, if it is close to pub & bar, why not use the pub tag plus club=X? --Westnordost (talk) 21:27, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
- A social club is not a Public House, it would be misleading to tag them as pubs. Firtly all data consumers would need to check for this subtag. A tourist looking for a pub would be very disapointed if they found a club where they need to apply for membership or find a stranger who is prepared to vouch for a stranger and sign them in. If it was the local Con CLub even more disappoined. When I joined Hugglescote Working Men's Club one of the questions was my occupation and employer, an existing member sponsored my application.
- The terms Social Club covers them all, it is a widely used tag and checks I have made of the data (both amenity and suggest that it is widely used and understood concept by the UK community.
- Social clube can be targeted at different groups of people, Working Mens Clubs cover working class people, others may be for a particular occupation such as railway workers, postal workers. Others are polital, Conservative, Labour or Liberal. Others a strictly non-political where political talk is disallowed. Others a religious, Catholic Clubs. Some are for employees of a particular company, these may allow associate members who can use the facilities but cannot vote or be committee memmbers.
- Others may be sports and social clubs where the emphasis may be on sports, my local one has both bowling greens and the main football team facilities. Others a a single sport, Cricket Clubs, Rugby Clubs, or a Bowls and Tennis club. Trigpoint (talk) 13:17, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
- Right, you have a good point. I retract my suggestion to use amenity=pub.
- The types of clubs you describe in your last paragraph and maybe even the political clubs, are something that seems to definitely belong into club=* category. But since you mention them, it sounds like you think that those should also be tagged with amenity=social_club, at least if they offer pub-like amenities. This blurs the distinction between social and other clubs explained in this wiki article somewhat.
- So, maybe it's about whether a club home has pub-like facilities. If it is, my suggestion is to tag it like any other club plus add another tag to signify that you can get some booze there --Westnordost (talk)
- cause tbh most club homes, also outside the UK will have some sort of bar, more or less professional, the least professional being self-service one with a coin box and most professional something like a (members only) restaurant --Westnordost (talk)
I've updated the description and page text with the information above. It would make sense to encourage mappers to choose a more specific tag. --Jeisenbe (talk) 22:57, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
Re-organisation of this page
I have re-organised this page to highlight the UK definition and the world-wide difference. Hopefully it's a little clearer. I have also asked on the talk-GB mailing list for input. Casey boy (talk) 22:10, 1 November 2021 (UTC)