Talk:Tag:leisure=schoolyard

not for the whole school-ground

Because there is amenity=school aready. This tag can be used for the schoolyard where the students can spend their free time while waiting for the next lesson. Sometimes access=* is needed as well, because on some yards everybody is allowed and sometimes its restricted. I would love to edit it but wanted to discuss it beforehand. --Negreheb (talk) 10:57, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Fully agree that the complete campus is perfectly mapped with amenity=school. Oxford dict defines "schoolyard" in BrE as the "school playground", while for AmE they say "the grounds of a school, especially as a place for children to play". As the "the grounds of a school" is well-defined in OSM as amenity=school, it indeed leaves the sub-area of the campus where the kids push each other (as in the OxDict AmE example "the schoolyard bully") during breaks for the "schoolyard" tag. --Polarbear w (talk) 11:32, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

The current definition is confusing as to me it's describing exactly what amenity=school. If the intent is to map areas of the "school playground", ie. areas where kids spend time during recess and lunch outside the buildings, then we should update the description to say that. This will be hard to survey without actually attending the school though, but regardless I'm okay with the tag. Most of the time it's just the amenity=school, minus the buildings and parking lot and natural=wood etc. but I agree it's better to explicitly tag it where known. Since OSM has a strong history of using the British English term, as @Polarbear_w points out the correct term in British English is "school playground". At the very least that should be mentioned as a synonym.Aharvey (talk) 22:28, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

History of the tag vs this page

As you see in the wiki history, the page was create on 9 May 2019 with the comment "as leisure=schoolyard is used in the data". Thus the description reflects the interpretation of the page creator, not necessarily of those who used the tag. Looking into the data, there are some clusters of the same mappers, respectively, in France and Germany, and a few in Australia, often a couple of years old; most of them indeed forming a smaller (often significantly smaller) sub-area of a well-mapped amenity=school campus. From the position within the campus of those I have probed the mappers indeed meant the sub-area dedicated to the breaks.

Another odd assumption of the creator of this page is the statement that schoolyards have an "entrance guarded by a security guard". I have heard such things for campuses in the US (only 1 occurence in the leisure=schoolyard data), but not for Europe or Australia, and certainly not for the sub-areas within the campus.

Thus also from this perspective, the page description should be adjusted accordingly. --Polarbear w (talk) 00:00, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Other campus features

@Jeisenbe - I do not find the recommendation to use leisure=playground or leisure=pitch instead of leisure=schoolyard matching the objects currently tagged so. As a large proportion of the current tags is in Germany, I understand that the intention was to represent the German "Schulhof", being an asphalted area for walking around during the break. The pitch for ball sports and the tartan for running during the sports lesson is something different. I also find, when mapping recently built primary schools, that they indeed contain a dedicated amenity=playground with sandpit and climbing frame, besides the asphalted "Schulhof". --Polarbear w (talk) 09:32, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Re: "Schulhof," I don't know the situation in Germany or this term, but if it is indeed "an asphalted area for walking around during the break", is this perhaps a highway=pedestrian / highway=footway area, if it doesn't contain a pitch or playground? In the USA (and Indonesia) the equivalent area is often used for playing or sports, so often it is mainly a series of small pitches + playgrounds in the Openstreetmap sense, where leisure=pitch is used for any dedicated court or playing area for sports. If a schoolyard is different from all of those things, I wonder how the tag can be defined in a verifiable way. Is it just equivalent to "amenity=school area minus parking lots and buildings", or is there something specific that can be used to decide what is the schoolyard, and what is just part of the amenity=school which is not the schoolyard? --Jeisenbe (talk) 12:13, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Actually, no. Because its a designated area and often there are special regulations that only apply there. Sometimes its just access, sometimes more and it differs on various schools also in austria and germany. amenity=school is the whole area. leisure=pitch is the designated are for playing sport. And leisure=schoolyard would be a designated area for goofing around in the breaks, usally only students and teachers allowed, depending on school. I refer to the third passage in this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoolyard and the picture as well. --Negreheb (talk) 13:41, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Would landuse=recreation_ground be a good fit? It is "sometimes also part of colleges". Special rules are implied by access=private. Problem is it sound like it could include multiple walking area, gardens, and mini-parks; and it is not clear whether it encompasses the entirety of a school outside classrooms (thus including a pitch enclosed). -- Kovposch (talk) 07:46, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

A recreation ground is a type of park with mainly grassy areas and pitches used for sports: "An open green space for general recreation, which often includes formal or informal pitches, nets and so on." Tag:landuse=recreation_ground - I would not use that for a schoolyard (Actually, I don't use it at all: leisure=park is better and clearer in all cases outside of Britain). --Jeisenbe (talk) 13:58, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Default access

Would it be fair for us to assume this tag implies access=private? In England I've never seen a school yard open to the public, and only in a remote Scottish town have I seen one accessible outside of school times. --CjMalone (talk) 11:49, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

I would agree that this is implicit. The same applies for the school campus itself, tagged amenity=school, and so far we have not bothered to specifically tag this. A distinction has been made, however, for leisure=playground, which is typically tagged as private when on school grounds because it defaults to public otherwise.--Polarbear w (talk) 12:05, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

As far as i'm aware a school if open and everybody is free to walk in. There is nowhere a sign that restricts that access. At least where i am located. So, from my side, no, its not default private and it should not be assumed. --Negreheb 12:13, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Ouf, actually, i forgot which tag i'm on. Sorry for that confusion. The school itself is open to public, the school yard probably most of the time not. Thats true. --Negreheb 12:13, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

In Germany most school yards have time intervals (usually when classes are finished) in which they are open to the public. --Nw520 (talk) 15:58, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

what is the public doing in those yards? What statistic is the 'most' based on? I remember seeing locked gates. --Polarbear w (talk) 16:03, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

This will changed based on region. In California, most school playgrounds and fields and locked and never open to the public without special permission. However, here in Oregon all the schools are open and the public may uses the grounds, fields and playgrounds any time the school is not in session (for example after 3:30pm, or on weekends) --Jeisenbe (talk) 04:26, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Should we should start documenting the defaults on the main page? It would be useful data for consumers. --CjMalone (talk) 08:32, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

As we see from the different comments, the practice differs by region. As we should not map the local legislation, my tendency would be "tag explicitly if it differs from the practice in the region".--Polarbear w (talk) 12:13, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes. I was asking if it would be appropriate to document the default "practice in the region". --CjMalone (talk) 13:23, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

I would welcome such documentation. —M!dgard [ talk ] 02:36, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

An alternative would be using Proposed_features/Defaults to document these defaults in the database itself. —M!dgard [ talk ] 02:43, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Please don't document a default access for every State in the USA. If we do that we'll have to document this for every country in the world, and that's a huge table. My comment about was meant to suggest that there is no global default, so this information should be tagged explicitly when known. --Jeisenbe (talk) 05:45, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

We do keep such tables for access restrictions on roads. But, fine, it's just a simple access=yes/private here. —M!dgard [ talk ] 06:02, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but that is a special page, it is not on the highway=residential or highway=track page. --Jeisenbe (talk) 08:11, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Paint mark details

@Minh_Nguyen - what is the purpose of adding the "Details" section with a variety of games paint marks? They include very rare values (sport=funnel_ball 32x). Listing leisure=pitch here makes it more difficult to differentiate between real sports pitches and schoolyards. Schoolyards may vary from country to country, and within a country depending on space. A wider campus might have room for all functions to be separated, a small inner-city one might have lots of functions condensed in the same space. --Polarbear w (talk) 20:08, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Moving the following section by @Minh_Nguyen from feature page to discussion. It is unclear what is intended here. Schoolyards may have an entertaining variety of markings all over the world. Do you recommend to tag them onto the leisure=schoolyard object, or micromap them within? If so, with which physical tag? Is it necessary to list the marks you might have seen in a particular school, or can we just generically refer to sport=* ? --Polarbear w (talk) 17:19, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

@Polarbear w: It's already very common to micromap them within the schoolyard. (For instance, here are over 600 basketball courts in the San Francisco area that are likely part of schoolyards, though I can't say 100% of them are because the leisure=schoolyard tag has only begun to be used in this area. There are 152 asphalt- or concrete-surfaced baseball diamonds, which are typical of schoolyards.) Also see playground=map, which isn't a sport but is almost always painted onto a schoolyard. The list below consists of physical tags; in case it isn't obvious, playground=* is one of those physical tags. In an inner-city schoolyard, many of these activities may overlap, but that happens on grassy recreation grounds too. Is it a problem that basketball courts that are part of schoolyards are tagged with the same leisure=pitch as separate basketball courts? This seems like a distinction that data consumers can infer using spatial queries, the same way that they could differentiate standalone soccer pitches and soccer pitches that are part of a larger landuse=recreation_ground. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 22:03, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

I am not arguing against micromapping schools. But please don't mix the school campus (amenity=school) with the schoolyard, the latter being a special part of the former. Have a look at the graphics how they relate. --Polarbear w (talk) 00:50, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm aware of the distinction between a school campus and a schoolyard. I'm pointing out the already common practice of micromapping a schoolyard as part of the process of micromapping a school campus. Is your claim that this practice is incorrect? Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that each paint mark itself be mapped as a line; rather, this is about mapping (for instance) the rectangle demarcating a basketball "court" as a leisure=pitch, just as it would if the same rectangle appeared by itself on a smaller paved area. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 01:09, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Ok it seems we think in the same direction, so we can discuss how things should be phrased. It seems all the features suggested below are not meant to be tagged on neither the amenity=school object nor on the leisure=schoolyard, good. Now, taking your basketball example, does it make a difference if that is a single-purpose pitch separate from the schoolyard, or painted on the schoolyard asphalt, maybe overlapping with other feature marks? How do we expect data consumers to handle partially overlapping markings? Draft: Besides dedicated playgrounds or sports pitches separate from the schoolyard, some schoolyards may have painted markings for various recess activities. These might be micromapped within the schoolyard area, and tagged with the particular activity, e.g. ... . --Polarbear w (talk) 17:38, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

That phrasing sounds good to me. If osm-carto or another Mapnik-based renderer were to give leisure=schoolyard a fill, the usual fill for a pitch would almost always appear above it, because smaller areas sort on top. If two baseball diamonds or basketball courts overlap (as is often the case even ignoring schoolyards), one of the fills would overlap the other. Even better, osmfr-cartocss will accurately depict overlapping sets of painted lines over the overlapping fills, as in the very common case of overlapping American football and soccer fields. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 06:53, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the productive discussion, I have inserted the rewritten section. BTW, the french style has some disadvantages, in particular it lets every muddy training pitch shine as a perfect facility, but that's offtopic here ;-) --Polarbear w (talk) 11:06, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Asphalt/concrete surface

Hello all. Is the surface the distinguishing factor between a schoolyard and a pitch? All the schoolyards that I've seen mapped (and in the examples on this page) are asphalt or concrete. Whereas I've mostly seen a field or area of grass at a school that is used for general play to be marked as leisure=pitch with no formal sport assigned. The two seem to be used in the same manner/purpose just different surface types. Am I wrong in this thinking? Thanks! BubbleGuppies (talk) 05:26, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

@BubbleGuppies: What you're describing sounds like a leisure=schoolyard or maybe a landuse=recreation_ground but not a leisure=pitch. A pitch can lack an assigned sport, but it isn't for generally frolicking around. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 06:27, 16 July 2022 (UTC)