Recently, iD was changed so that shop=chemist is labeled as "Drugstore"
for American English users (and continues to be labeled "Chemist" for
British English users). [1] An American mapping a Walgreens, CVS, or
Rite Aid who searches for "drugs" will see the following choices, in order:
* Drugstore (shop=chemist, marked with a shopping cart icon)
* Pharmacy (amenity=pharmacy, marked with a pill bottle)
Meanwhile, searching for "pharmacy" -- a synonym of "drugstore" in
American English -- produces only the amenity=pharmacy preset.
The rationale is that amenity=pharmacy should be used only for pharmacy
counters (which can be found at both drugstores and inside
supermarkets), while shop=chemist should be used for full-service
drugstores that *may* contain pharmacy counters. Currently, this is at
odds with the wiki and longstanding practice, which stipulates that a
shop=chemist *may not* fill prescriptions.
This change to iD came about due to a discussion in the Name Suggestion
Index project, which is the component in iD that suggests tags when you
fill in a commonly used name. [2] I happened to notice the change
because it caused Transifex to prompt me to update iD's Vietnamese
localization. To my knowledge, there has been no discussion on the
mailing lists or formal proposal on the wiki, though the iD maintainer
intends to edit the wiki to match iD's interpretation. iD is the only
software that has made this change.
On the one hand, I've come around to liking the proposal, because it
makes it easier for data consumers to distinguish between pharmacy
counters and full-fledged drugstores. On the other hand, I think it's
problematic because an American mapping a Walgreens or CVS could
potentially tag a "drugstore" and be unaware that they'd need to
separately map the pharmacy counter in order to indicate that
prescriptions may be filled on-site.
Currently, amenity=pharmacy is far and away more common than
shop=chemist in the U.S. as a way to tag drugstores. Certainly anyone
retagging amenity=pharmacy to shop=chemist would be careful to add an
additional amenity=pharmacy POI where the pharmacy counter would be.
(For a typical Walgreens or CVS, it'd be next to the drive-through
canopy.) However, I have little faith that the average iD user would
know to do the same, since the word "drugstore", like "pharmacy",
implies the sale of prescription drugs.
I've hashed out many of these points in [3], but I think the discussion
needs to involve the wider OSM community now. There's little chance of
data consumers and other editors updating their logic if the change is
only discussed in the iD project.
[1] https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues/3201
[2] https://github.com/osmlab/name-suggestion-index/issues/30
[3] https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues/3213
--
m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us
_______________________________________________
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us