Talk:Tag:man made=flagpole

Change type to flag:type

The key "type" is used primarily for relations and should generally be avoided for other features - see Key:type. Can we therefore change type=signal/national/governmental/… to flag:type=signal/national/governmental/…? It has been used only a few dozen times until now ([1], [2], [3]), so this change would still be easily possible. --Tordanik 09:11, 20 September 2012 (BST)

I've changed it now. --Tordanik 00:00, 14 October 2012 (BST)

Image of the hoist flag

flag=File:Flag_of_Germany.svg

What about tagging the color of the flag or perhaps link an image to the flag, so the renderer (of a 3d map) can take the flag image and render it. In wikimedia commons there are a lot of flags, especially flags of countries. --Chinus (talk) 15:24, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

I think it would indeed be interesting to be able to render the correct flag for those flagpoles that constantly show the same flag. However, I would prefer to use a machine-readable encoding of "flag of X" instead of an image. For example, we could use:

• flag:type=nationial plus a country code like US, DE, ...
• for organizations that aren't countries, a link to wikidata/wikipedia for the organization the flag belongs to (using subject:wikipedia or perhaps a more appropriate tag).

The choice of the specific image, the image file format (svg, png, jpg, ...), whether three colored stripes would be better than an image for simple flags etc. should be made by the renderer. --Tordanik 15:40, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

• Tordanik, I like your idea, can we get it done? --AmaryllisG (talk) 01:40, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

I would still like to establish this idea. Not sure if a proposal is needed, but it would be the standard approach. I would be in favour of extending the country=* key to also apply to flags rather than just embassies. For the wikidata tag, there is now a popular proposal, so maybe I should alert them to the topic on their talk page. However, I would like to finish my current proposal before starting something new. What do you think? --Tordanik 17:42, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

flag:type national vs. governmental

Where is there a clear border between national and governmental? See File:Hibbs flagpole.JPG for example. --TBKMrt (talk) 08:11, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

This seems to be an US flag which would be a straightforward case for flag:type=national. Or am I missing some subtleties here? --Tordanik 12:16, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, this is a US flag - this was never questioned. My question was: If there is one, where is the border between a national and a governmental. Can you give an example for both of them? --TBKMrt (talk) 21:10, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

I agree that this distinction is somewhat under-documented. In practice, I guess this is what the values mean:

• national: a national flag
• governmental: a government's flag, unless it's a national flag

The latter could be the flag of a city or regional administration, for example. --Tordanik 16:09, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

I added a table for the flag types. I left the gavernmental flag part without information. I guess it could be something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_flag , but I'm not sure. Somebody who has a good example for a governmental flag should insert the information there. --TBKMrt (talk) 10:52, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

country for flag:type=national

Is there an already existing way to tag the flag of a country for flag:type=national? A flag with the national tag in an embassy for example is usually not the national flag of the country the embassy is in. --TBKMrt (talk) 00:59, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

There's no firmly established tagging for that, but see the topic #Image of the hoist flag above for suggestions. My preferred solution would still be to allow country=* on flag poles in addition to embassies. Would that work for you? --Tordanik 17:00, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't really mind how to tag it, but eg. country=US would work for me. --TBKMrt (talk) 19:27, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

I added the country key to the list of recommended tags since it sounds like a good idea. --TBKMrt (talk) 16:23, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

flag:type vs. type:flag

Does anybody mind if the current flag:type is changes to type:flag? The reason for this is to match other existing tags like source:maxspeed and turn:lanes. --TBKMrt (talk) 01:01, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

It's far from the only such tag, though? I'm thinking of fire_hydrant:type=*, seamark:type=*, tower:type=*, piste:type=* and others like them. --Tordanik 16:56, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I know that there are more tags that have type after the main key. From what I can tell type seems to be the only one that is placed after the main key.
I also find it more logical to have type:flag and source:maxspeed. The patter would be the xxx:of yyy. So source:maxspeed -> the source of maxspeed. You can use this to dissolve longer chains: eg. destination:symbol:lanes:backward -> the direction for symbols, the symbols for lanes, the lanes in the backward direction. You could also say from big to small.
--TBKMrt (talk) 19:35, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Specific flags

The country=* key is set to an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, which can be ambiguous when it comes to flags. For example, 6370535193 6370535193 represents one of many flagpoles in San José, California, that display the South Vietnamese flag. VN was formerly used for South Vietnam, whereas VD was used for North Vietnam. After the Vietnam War, a unified Vietnam took over the VN code. In the United States, there are state laws specifying that the South Vietnamese flag is still the official flag representing Vietnam, international diplomacy notwithstanding, so flag:type=national is still probably more appropriate than flag:type=historic. I've been using the subject=*, subject:wikidata=*, and flag:wikidata=* tags to clarify which flag is hoisted. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 15:56, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Where a Wikidata item for the flag itself exists, flag:wikidata seems like a good and simple option. It would work even for flags that don't represent a territorial entity, but e.g. a cause or movement. Sounds good to me! --Tordanik 18:19, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Good point. Here's an example of a flag pole representing a movement: 6379803903 6379803903. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 23:27, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Multiple flags hoisted on a pole

In cases where multiple flags are hoisted on a single flagpole, I've been mapping a single man_made=flagpole POI with semicolon-delimited values in flag:type=*, flag:wikidata=*, etc., ordered from top to bottom. Does this approach seem reasonable, or would it be better to map multiple coincident POIs? – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 00:41, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Not all flag poles are vertical

Across the street from the little flag pole in front of the Post Office is the much bigger flag,

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attached at angle 35 degrees to the vertical from the 3rd floor of the Norflesburg Building. How to map? Jidanni (talk) 15:49, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

@Jidanni: Yes, this is a common case. I've been mapping it as a man_made=flagpole node along the building way, at the pole's anchor point, also tagging it as support=wall_mounted. However, some wall-mounted flagpoles are very long, outstretched, and not necessarily perpendicular to the wall; I've been tempted to tag them as ways to make that clearer, but there's no renderer support for that yet. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 21:37, 21 November 2022 (UTC)