Collection of common issues for FAQ

[good-praxis]

Ever had a controversial PR you didn't know how to deal with, or hit a wall during research? Here's the threat to mention those PRs, so that we may get a good feel of the edge cases we may run into!

Here are a few examples:
#2009 - Generic-ish government run store, procedure is currently in discussion in #2028
#2065 - Brands with different names that may offer different services but may also don't
#2019 - Wikipedia article is sparse and in a different language than the country code of the establishment
#1943 (comment) #272 - Brand definitely exists, and is named on another wikipedia article, but has neither a wikidata object nor an article on it's own
#2110 - Brand maybe exists, but is neither mentioned on wikipedia nor wikidata, yet research suggests it's part of another brand
#1868 #1735 - Two brands with the same name but their own wikidata/wikipedia article
#1991 (Issue) - Which class of establishment should this brand be mainly classified as?
#2087 - Uncertainty whether it's a brand or a generic word
#2118 (comment) - Store in other country shut down, the entries on OSM are supposedly outdated
#2116

[eigenbrot]

#2144 - Store sells items from 2 or 3 specific categories. Example of service tag.

[kymckay]

#1614 - Ran into a few of these, wikidata/wikipedia page for the operating company, but not the brand themselves (see also first discussion of #2233). However, it's almost presented is as if the two are the same thing.

Unsure whether it's appropriate to link these wikipedia/wikidata pages or if we'd want separate entries for specifically the brand.

[sinclarius]

#1614 - Ran into a few of these, wikidata/wikipedia page for the operating company, but not the brand themselves (see also first discussion of #2233). However, it's almost presented is as if the two are the same thing.

Unsure whether it's appropriate to link these wikipedia/wikidata pages or if we'd want separate entries for specifically the brand.

This is something I had wondered about, too. I encountered that issue a few times when adding data to entries in Japan, where wikipedia often has entries for holding companies rather than the chains/brands themselves (for example: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E6%88%B8%E5%B1%8B%E3%83%9B%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%83%87%E3%82%A3%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B0%E3%82%B9 ). I ultimately ended up linking to the holding company page, because there is no equivalent page for the storefronts.

Is company/operations information distinctly separate from the "brand" of a place?

[Adamant36]

Personally, I go with the operating company if the brand is mentioned on their page and it doesnt have its own page. If for instance the operating company page says how many brand stores there are open and in what regions, thats more important to link to then not. Even if the page isnt for the brand. Otherwise, just link to the wikidata page for the brand if there is one and leave out the wikipedia page to the operating company (there seems to be brands with wikidata but no wikipedia page). At least that's how I see it.

[Adamant36]

It would be good if this was revived and created. There's been a lot of redundant conversation's with all the new contributors lately about how things are done and why, that just aren't covered in the contributing file. It would be good if things that keep coming up where collected in a single source that was more official and authoritative then just the contributor having to take the maintainers word on it. Which seems hard for people to do sometimes. Plus, its hard to keep track of all the issues where things were originally decided. I think the first list by @good-praxis is a good starting point. There's probably more that could be added to it, but those things should at least be covered if nothing else. As most of them still keep coming up repeatedly.

[bhousel]

I know sorry! I feel actually bad about not doing this yet.

I have a branch where I started to a FAQ, but got distracted with other things. I'll make it a higher priority now given that this project does attract a lot of new contributors.