What kind of entrance is this?

[1ec5]

General

Affected tag(s) to be modified/added: entrance
Question asked: Who can use this building entrance? What kind of entrance is this?

Checklist

Checklist for quest suggestions (see guidelines):

• 🚧 To be added tag is established and has a useful purpose
  • More specific tags than entrance=yes would allow routers to route to the correct side of the building.
  • Some renderers like osm-carto distinguish entrance=main from other entrance=* values.
• 🤔 Any answer the user can give must have an equivalent tagging (Quest should not reappear to other users when solved by one)
• 🐿️ Easily answerable by everyone from the outside but a survey is necessary
• 💤 Not an overwhelming percentage of elements have the same answer (No spam)
  • This depends on whether armchair mappers have been mapping only the main entrances or all the entrances they can see from aerial imagery.
• 🕓 Applies to a reasonable number of elements (Worth the effort)

Ideas for implementation

Element selection:

entrance=yes that is one of multiple entrance=* nodes along a building=* way. Maybe require the building to cover enough area or filter out things like building=garage to avoid spamming the user about insignificant buildings.

Metadata needed:

Proposed GUI:

Select one:

• Main entrance – entrance=main
• Side or back entrance – entrance=secondary
• Entrance for staff only – entrance=service access=private
• Entrance for deliveries only – entrance=service access=delivery
• Exit only – entrance=exit
• Emergency exit – entrance=emergency

[matkoniecz]

"Everyone (main entrance) – entrance=main"

What about entrances to residential buildings where entrance=staircase may fit or houses where main one will be still private?

Or is it covered by " filter out things like building=garage to avoid spamming the user about insignificant buildings."?

[andrewharvey]

How about just "What type of entrance is this?" instead of trying to conflate entrance= and access=?

[1ec5]

Yes, I was assuming that the quest could generally filter out buildings that only have private entrances. Even so, a house’s front door could still validly be entrance=main even as access=private would apply. So maybe the only problem is the wording. Would it be weird to ask, “Which of the building’s entrances is this?” and answer simply that it’s the main entrance?

[1ec5]

I reworded the original post to focus on the “kind” of entrance rather than access, but I left in a distinction between staff-only and delivery-only entrances, in case that makes sense at enough POIs.

[mnalis]

@1ec5 Additionally note that wiki for entrance=main specifically notes This tag should only be used for the primary entrance to a publicly accessible building (like access=yes) and that you should Use a different value for private buildings and residences, such as yes, home, service, staircase

[1ec5]

Yes, it looks like that was later added to the wiki page without discussion even though it wasn’t part of the approved proposal, and there have been discussions about potentially deprecating that usage in favor of entrance=main.

Regardless, I think it would make sense for this quest to try to avoid private buildings and residences, since classifying entrances on those buildings is less commonly useful for navigation by the general public. Unfortunately, building=yes could be either public or private, but I think any of the following strategies would mitigate the problem:

• Only consider buildings that already have multiple entrances tagged as entrance=yes. These buildings are less likely to be private buildings and are more likely to need entrance classification.
• Only consider nonresidential building=* or building:use=* values.
• Only consider non-apartment buildings over a certain size (way area or length).
• Offer the user more options like “Home entrance” and “Garage door”.

[matkoniecz]

Unfortunately, building=yes could be either public or private, but I think any of the following strategies would mitigate the problem:

Note that such buildings can be simply skipped, StreetComplete will ask used to classify building=yes objects.

[westnordost]

I am not sure if this can be made into a quest because of @matkoniecz 's first comment: Not all entrances (to residential buildings) are staircases, so in many cases, it is not possible to get more detailed than entrance=yes.

As an example, I took this picture today:

Sorry about the resolution. anyway, entrance 37 and 39 are clearly staircases, but 37a is just an entrance. (And left and right of that entrance, you actually see two more entrances but without a housenumber). For these entrances, it is not possible to get more detailed than yes.

[1ec5]

to residential buildings

What if the quest avoids residential buildings and building=yes (in case it’s residential)?

[westnordost]

Hm well, I could imagine a building similar to the one shown but it's an office (or generic commercial) building. I mean, it is easy to see if something is a main entrance, it is easy to see if something is a staircase entrance. And then there is "other entrance", entrance=yes.

[westnordost]

For example this building:

https://www.google.de/maps/@53.585263,9.9534988,3a,60y,348.55h,87.92t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sEQ2gRX3u_aniJOfRnhQZhA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

There are three (or four) entrances. I'd say that all three classify as "an" entrance. Neither of them is "main" nor a staircase.

[1ec5]

In my opinion, “other entrance” would correspond to one of the other values, like entrance=secondary or entrance=service (which could have distinct options). Also, I assume it’s valid for a building to have multiple entrance=mains, such as in the case of a strip mall or a downtown department store building fronting multiple streets.

If we’re concerned that it may not be possible to distinguish between a secondary entrance and a service entrance, then even a simple “Is this the main entrance?” quest would still prove a benefit to navigation use cases, but the problem is that answering “no” would keep entrance=yes, making the quest reappear. So I suggested offering more than a binary option so that we can get away from entrance=yes.

[westnordost]

I'd also get away from entrance=yes, but the prerequisite for that is that for all kinds of possible entrance types, there is a corresponding tag. Can entrance=secondary be understood as "just another entrance"? I.e. in that picture above, would every entrance be tagged as secondary then?

[matkoniecz]

would every entrance be tagged as secondary then?

That seems to be a logical conclusion, but it seems quite silly result.

(BTW, behind the left tree trunk I think there is entrance=garage - though that is not making entrance=secondary less silly in that case)

[1ec5]

If each of the entrances (other than the garage) is of equal importance, wouldn’t they all be main entrances?

[westnordost]

Well, for the example image, we don't know how important each entrance is.
So in conclusion, main/secondary entrances only really make sense for (public) buildings where it is obvious. And this means, for the entrances in the photo, is is not so relevant (not public) and there is no tag that can be more precise than entrance=yes.

[matkoniecz]

What kind of entrance is here? (where no entrance is marked) #3941 is a new related idea

[deevroman]

Based on #3941. Indeed, we cannot change their type for all entrance=yes. But what if we filter out some of them? For example, select only entrance for building=apartments/house/... Or ask about entrance=yes if it doesn't have access=*

[matkoniecz]

@deevroman I suspect that some still will be =yes or not surveyable :(

Or ask about entrance=yes if it doesn't have access=*

That would require allowing to tag access, basically a new quest. I thought about it and have no good idea how to ask it in way that would gather relevant info (entrance=staircase) without turning into "yes, it is access=private" spam.

EDIT: testing in fork matkoniecz@35673c2

[mnalis]

(ref: there is discussion related to this on https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/entrance-staircase-issues-initially-was-new-tag-idea-entrance-unclassifiable-or-other-way-of-marking-that-entrance-yes-is-not-really-assignable-to-more-specific-entrance-categories/8894)

[matkoniecz]

Yeah, and it went nowhere as far as StreetComplete is concerned as there was no support for tagging that SC would need to make such quest viable.

There were also some complaints about entrance=staircase but also not rising to the point where things need changing, I think (though maybe someone will make thread calling for its deprecation/avoidance...)