I would like to know how people are using the tag name and/or operator.
I think operator has been mis-used. It appears in a lot of JOSM presets where I believe it is incorrect.
For gas stations, the name of the supplying oil company would be properly described as the "brand" (e.g. Shell, Mobil). If someone asked me for the "operator" of the station, I would take this to be synonymous with "owner", and it would be unlikely to know who it is (or care) unless I knew them personally, or went there often and saw their name repeated on my credit card statement. I'd like to tag:
brand=Shell
name="Bob Smith Auto" (if I happen to know it)
operator=* would be redundant unless it were a third party.
Note that despite not being documented, "brand" is one of the keys in which JOSM looks for a name to render (after name:xx, name, int_name, ref, and operator). The renderers do not, but I believe should, if we can agree on its use.
Similarly, while a hotel might be called "Ocala Marriott", it is likely that it is owned and operated by something like "AQV Hospitality, LLC" under a license/franchise agreement. I would like to tag:
name="Ocala Marriott"
brand=Marriott
operator="AQV Hospitality, LLC" (if I happen to know it)
Another example would be new car dealers:
name="Fletcher Jones Motorcars"
brand=Mercedes
It was obvious for me that operator might come as an additional attribute but it seems that the wiki is suggesting to replace name by operator. Or at least, it's questionning on the page about amenity=bank:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dbank
I would tag name=*. operator and brand would seem redundant (in the US at least). ref could be used for the branch name and/or number.
Alan Mintz <[email protected]>
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