With a "data consumer" hat on, I did look at the usage of "amenity=public_building" in the UK over Christmas. I really wasn't able to read anything into it - its use locally included public toilets and "government functions" that are actually outsourced to a third-party, as well as the bandstands that you mention.
What might be interesting (and what I didn't do unfortunately) would be to sample a bunch of them and suggest better alternatives - maybe in changeset discussions? Original Message From: Matthijs Melissen Sent: Saturday, 9 January 2016 21:24 To: Tag discussion, strategy and related tools Reply To: Tag discussion, strategy and related tools Subject: [Tagging] Public buildings Hi all, The tag amenity=public_building has been marked as 'Don't use' on the wiki since 2010 (see http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dpublic_building ). As far as I know, marking the tag as 'Don't use' has not been discussed extensively, and the tag is still very commonly used (111 941 times currently). I therefore think it would be worth to discuss this tag once more. Initially I didn't have much problems with this tag, and I have used it commonly to mark government buildings. However, when I started looking at how this tag is used (with Overpass), I discovered that it is indeed use for quite a variety of things. It saw it being used for government buildings, train stations, expo halls, art centres, municipal sport centres, and band stands, amongst others. Nearly all of these have more specific other tags. In particular, potential replacement tags for government tags are office=administrative (26 836 times in use) for central government and office=administrative (8 725) for local government. I think we have a choice of two options: 1. Accept the tag - in that case we'd need to come up with a clear definition, and decide how it compares to the office=administrative and office=administrative tags. 2. Reject the tag and mark it as discouraged on the wiki.. The tag is currently supported by JOSM, but not by iD. If we decide to approve this tag, it would make sense to ask iD to support it. On the other hand, if we decide to discourage it, it would make sense to ask JOSM to remove the preset, and preferably, even add a deprecation warning to the validator. What do you think? Which way would you prefer to go? -- Matthijs _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging