Marc, I think you are confusing the goal and the means to get there.  I
agree - the goal is to be able to globally find all Wendy's, so that when I
travel, I still can search for familiar brands.  So the same brand should
have the same ID everywhere.  That ID can be either textual or numeric.
Both approaches have pros & cons.  The ID can be defined inside OSM - in
which case we must have a globally-coordinated effort to standardize and
document them - e.g. on a wiki, or we can use external IDs.  We already use
some external IDs like ISO-defined "USA" or "TX", but Wikidata is clearly a
much less standard, user-contributable system. I am not sure OSM community
should duplicate the effort of Wikipedia community to redefine concepts.
Look at "denomination" tag - OSM has a long list of values for it, but most
of them are links to Wikipedia.

Lastly, lets not confuse what we *store* (DB) and how we enter/display (UI)
a value.  Data consumers would value cross-referencable IDs much more. The
users on the other hand should see proper text, preferably with additional
things like company's logo.  Wikidata would allow you to show that logo,
and a company description in a dropdown. Text wouldn't.

P.S. Snackbar Wendy's should be in OSM, and judging by media and legal
attention, it should also be in Wikipedia, or at least in Wikidata (which
has much lower barrier of entry).  The searching for it is tricky
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goes#Fast_food

P.P.S. I applaud local Wendy's. I am not a big fan of having identical food
brands in every corner of the globe, but that's a personal taste preference

On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 2:47 PM, Marc Gemis <marc.ge...@gmail.com> wrote:

> >
> > Can anyone think of an example where two unrelated brands share the same
> > name and category of business in the same geographical area?
>
> Is "the same geographical area" relevant ? Why should a data consumer
> use a separate datebase to identify the brand of an item ?
>
> Suppose I want to find all "Wendy's". Why do I need to know that the
> one in The Netherlands does not  belong to the brand found in the US ?
> [1] Shouldn't this be part of the OSM data in some way ?
>
> regards
>
> m
>
> [1] https://www.businessinsider.nl/een-zeeuw-noemde-zn-
> snackbar-wendys-naar-zn-dochter-en-weerstaat-de-gelijknamige-amerikaanse-
> fastfoodgigant/
>
> _______________________________________________
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