User:Heliassus/Proposal:Unify departure boards
| Proposal:Unify departure boards | |
|---|---|
| Proposal status: | Draft (under way) |
| Proposed by: | Heliassus |
| Draft started: | 2024-11-20 |
Proposal
Objectives
I
The goal of this proposal is to define a unified tagging scheme for departure board/passenger information displays as found on train stations, bus stops, etc. This proposal aims to keep tagging clear for mappers while still providing the most important differentiator for consumers, i.e. whether a board has live updates on delays, cancellations or similar.
II
It focuses mainly on departure times, as these are often the most relevant to users and also effectively the only thing both current tagging schemes are used for. Tagging of additional information such as reasons for delays, next stops, etc. are left for a potential future proposal.
III
To ease the transition for data consumers, this proposal tries to keep compatibility with existing tagging as high as possible. This means avoiding the introduction of new tags and invalidation of existing ones, wherever possible and reasonable.
Consequences in case this proposal proceeds
- Deprecate passenger_information_display=* in favour of departures_board=*
- Refine the values and their meanings for departures_board=*
- Rename the mistranslated departures_board=delay to the more appropriate departures_board=interval
Rationale
Deprecation of "passenger_information_display"
The community already showed strong favour to deprecate this key in a previous proposal. Below I've listed arguments for this decision, most of which were already brought up in different discussions regarding this topic:
- The wording with display implies, especially for non-native English speakers, an electronical device involved and could therefore lead to confusion if extended to cover printed boards, etc.
- passenger_information_display=* is (at least in it's currently used form) a boolean key (yes/no make over 99 % of uses). This heavily limits its capabilities to represent the real world. For example, there is no way to tag a non-electronical, static board and therefore a new tag is required, leading to the current redundancy situation. departures_board=* on the other hand allows for multiple descriptive values, which allows it to cover all current uses of passenger_information_display=* plus necessary additional ones in one single key.
- The narrow meaning of the key (as detailed above) causes the ambiguity of passenger_information_display=no which could either mean the absence of any such information or just an electronic/digital one. This is especially problematic as
nois by far the most common value, with more than two thirds of uses.
- passenger_information_display=* is an extraordinary long key. With its 29 characters it's longer than 95 % of relevant (i.e. more than 500 uses) keys. It gets worse if you exclude compound keys (with
:), making it the longest (relevant) key of all. This negatively affects readability, editing capability and storage usage. This is especially bad when you consider derived keys, such as passenger_information_display:speech_output=*.
- Comparing the equivalent passenger_information_display=yes and departures_board=realtime, they're effectively on par in terms of usage according to Taginfo (34,801 vs 28,198) with a slight favour towards the former. However, the departures_board=* key is used almost three times as often in total according to Taginfo.
Renaming of "delay"
The main aim of this proposal is the choice between the two conflicting keys (see above). However, the one that's to be selected should not suffer from inner conflicts, but instead have sensible values. Delay is a mistranslation and not the correct English word to describe what it is currently used for. Therefore, this proposal suggests a new name for it: interval. Given the low prevalence of the tag (701 uses according to Taginfo), the impact of a temporary lack of data consumer support should be justifiable.
Arguably, the correct English term for it would be headway (note: I'm not a native speaker myself, so I'm not sure). However, it's less clear for non-native speakers and might lead to confusion, especially as nearly all current uses of the tag are in non-English speaking countries. Furthermore, “headway” is even defined as The interval of time or distance between the fronts of two vehicles (e.g. buses) moving in succession in the same direction, especially along the same pre-determined route. (emphasis by me) on Wiktionary, so using “interval” still fits well.
Tagging
This proposal defines the following tags for different types of departure boards/passenger information displays:
| Value | Explanation | Current usage |
|---|---|---|
| departures_board=yes | Some kind of departures board exists, but no further information about it is available. A more specific value below should be used instead where possible.
No change from the current rule. |
|
| departures_board=realtime | There is an electronic departures board installed at the station which changes the displayed information based on the current time and/or the status of the connection. It applies to every board that can change without physical intervention from a human on site, independent whether it shows absolute or relative times. | |
| departures_board=timetable | There is a static departures board (e.g. printed on paper) which can not be changed remotely. It shows the exact and absolute time at which trains/buses/… arrive resp. depart. | |
| departures_board=interval | There is a static departures board (e.g. printed on paper) which can not be changed remotely. It does not show absolute times, but rather the interval at which trains/buses/… arrive resp. depart. | |
| departures_board=no | No departures board of any kind is available.
No change from the current rule. |
To indicate an available speech output, the subkey departures_board:speech_output=* continues to serve this purpose the same way as before. The corresponding passenger_information_display:speech_output=* gets replaced by it.
Therefore, the following tags would change:
| Old tagging | New tagging |
|---|---|
| passenger_information_display=yes | departures_board=realtime |
| passenger_information_display=no | departures_board=no, departures_board=timetable or departures_board=interval (see the third point in Rationale) |
| departures_board=delay | departures_board=interval |
| passenger_information_display:speech_output=* | departures_board:speech_output=* |
Examples
| Photo | Correct tag |
|---|---|
 |
departures_board=realtime |
|
departures_board=realtime |
|
departures_board=realtime |
Features/Pages affected
Lorem Ipsum
External discussions
Comments
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