I need some help @openstreetmap.
UPDATE: Thanks for all the help!
What do I do, if a business has closed down, and then a new business has taken over the same place?
Do I mark the previous business as “does not exist” and add the new one, or do I edit the existing one?
@danish @openstreetmap in general edit the existing one, all elements in OSM are versioned and it is considered best practice to maintain the history of objects.
@danish @openstreetmap naturally I do have to add one nerdy and nitpicking observation. It is actually “nearly all elements in OSM”, as versioning was introduced with API 0.6 https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/API_changes_between_v0.5_and_v0.6 in March 2009, elements deleted before that date are literally gone.
But only when it is the same object. If it was a POI marked on the map as a node, then it is better to delete the old node and create a new one.
Otherwise we will get something like this: https://osm.org/node/2/history
@foxy @danish @openstreetmap you need to differentiate between reusing existing nodes for other purposes (as in your example), which irl works against preserving history, and using an existing element for a new or different facility in the same place (there is some grey area there obviously).
@danish @openstreetmap Edit the existing one to preserve object history. Good practice ist to change shop=something to disused:shop=something. This way the object can be re-tagged again as shop=somethingnew if it re-opens. If it just re-opens just skip the disused step.
@danish @openstreetmap
Not sure if/how this works in Organic Maps, but it is common to change the name and type to the new business and ideally put some context in the description (for all) and/or note (for other mappers) tag (like “this used to be a bakery until May 24, reopened as a cafe in July 24”) and possibly keeping the old name in an old_name tag.
The advantage over deleting and adding a new POI is that you can track the history of a business premise over time via one OSM node object.
I recommend to use the changeset comment to be be used for this kind of plaintext information.
Unfortunately my experience with Organic Maps was, that the changeset comment cannot be changed and for text in the comment text field a new map note is created.
I hope that Organic Maps developer team will improve on this and will allow changeset comments.
Delete the old business and create the new business. Alternatively you can change the information to match the new business.
Please don’t delete and recreate if you can. Keeping the history of points is useful, if you delete a point you will delete its history. Wiki article with more details: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Keep_the_history
Good article.
@infeeeee: Regarding deletion of history. Not sure if you simplified, but its not true that deletion of a point will delete its history.
As the article states
Deletion is not erasing the history of an object in the database.
It is just harder to find after deletion.
