iD knows about electric poles but not telephone poles

[jidanni]

iD knows about electric poles and suggests it when we type it in -- alas but not telephone poles.

[Adamant36]

This is something I've wondered about before. Telephone lines usually piggy back on electric poles don't they? So, essentially both use the same poles but they are tagged as power poles because the power lines are a higher priority? (I really don't know).

[jidanni]

@Adamant36 in Taiwan they are always on seperate poles, otherwise there would be no redundancy, and any disaster would take out both telephones and electricity at the same time. Unthinkable!

[quincylvania]

Hmm this issue speaks to a core problem with tags like power=pole. Such a tag inextricably couples a feature's form (a pole) with its function (holds power lines). You can't add utility poles without implying they hold power lines.

While we could add more and more presets for anything a pole could be holding (coaxial cable, fiberoptic line, telegraph wire, clothesline, etc.), this would be confusing to iD mappers ("what type of pole is this? should I care?") and would further complicate the OSM database.

A simpler solution is to say "this is a pole" and then specify its functions with subtags. I'm just now learning about man_made=utility_pole and I think we should support it in iD for such situations.

[jidanni]

Glad to see poles are getting more attention.
In rural / remote areas they are indeed vital markers.
In fact through my promotion
https://www.jidanni.org/geo/taipower/
they have become a major way of reporting incident locations to 911 /
119 first rescuers in my country.

[quincylvania]

@jidanni Nice, I hope this is helpful. I'm closing this since now mappers can add any kind of utility pole. If someone cares a lot about tagging what these poles hold, I recommend coming up with a namespace like utility:*=yes, e.g. utility:communication=yes. I don't see us supporting tags like communication=pole anytime soon.

[jidanni]

(Here we see electric poles have an icon, but not telephone poles.)

communication=pole
name=中埤枝130
telephone=pole

[quincylvania]

@jidanni Yes, like I explained, iD will support man_made=utility_pole instead of telephone=pole.

[jidanni]

I have an idea:
Divorce what iD encourages via the way of hints,
from what iD "renders" on the map.

That way iD could support (render) currently officially promoted tags as seen on
the wiki...

While at the same time only encouraging its better set of tags, via the
way of hints.

That way people following the current standards, would not have to worry
about needing to go edit each item to keep it from possibly disappearing later.

Well, something like that.

[quincylvania]

@jidanni Rendering is encouragement. Things that iD doesn't support should look unsupported. This avoids confusion like "why can I see this but not add it?"

[flacombe]

Hi

Sorry for coming here a bit late
Telecom poles topic is a long run discussion, where no satisfying solution has been found yet.
Since there are many shared poles, something like man_made=utility_pole would be better than specific telecom feature.
Have in mind towers, portals and terminals please.

Instead of man_made=utility_pole, would you consider following possibilities please:

• man_made=pole + utility=*
• man_made=tower + utility=*
• man_made=portal + utility=*

Buuuuut this should be discussed on tagging and need a formal proposal to be introduced, there are just so many power towers/poles in the db yet that it can't be addressed with a specific editor issue.

here is a diary entry that worth a reading about current work on power supports cleanup valid for any utility actually as to prevent further definition of utility-specific keys)
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/InfosReseaux/diary/391058

[quincylvania]

@flacombe Any coalescing of tags would be appreciated, but I'll leave breaking change up to other channels. A few notes:

• I don't mind man_made=utility_pole. Things like flagpoles and lighting poles have different forms
• man_made=tower is already used for building-like towers

[jidanni]

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Telecoms#Telephone_Poles currently says

Recommended tagging

communication=pole
telephone=pole
ref=

What should I update it to? (iD just sees this as a raw "Point".)

[jidanni]

OK. iD helped me (via hints) make:

man_made=utility_pole
ref=12345
utility=telecom

So I will make a note about it on the wiki.