Can't remove restaurant / mark it as closed

[axelsimon]

Hi,
While the app suggests to add a restaurant, it doesn't offer an option to remove a place that has closed or at least mark it as closed.

This would be very useful as, unfortunately, some of the restaurants disappear over time, leaving the app in a less-than-useful state.

I suggest putting this in the "edit" menu of each restaurant.

Thanks!

[Rudloff]

Hello,

When a restaurant has closed, OpenStreetMap recommends replacing the POI with the new shop/restaurant that replaces it.
I want to keep the OVM editor very simple, so I will not add a way to do this.

(However, I might add a message explaining that more complex changes need to be done directly on OSM.)

[axelsimon]

Hi Rudloff, thanks for your answer.

I understand your logic, and keeping the OVM editor simple is clearly a very good idea, however I don't think it makes sense from the user's perspective.

Putting myself in a user's shoes: If I can add a restaurant to keep the map up to date, why can't I remove a place, or at the very least mark it as closed to avoid other people going there and finding the place closed?

Nothing makes people distrust a map app more than going to a POI because the map says it's there and then finding it doesn't exist. If it's the case for one POI, how do I know it's not the case for any other one?
Mark as closed is what makes a site like Yelp valuable to a lot of users, because it stays up to date.

Therefore I really think we should find a way to allow users to report a place as closed. I know that OSM recommends removing the old POI and creating a new one in its place (at least, that what I was told a few years ago when I asked), but a workaround could be to send a simple tag to OSM such as "FIXME:closed" when a user marks a POI as closed and then filter out POIs that have the tag, to avoid presenting them to users. (We could also then have a bot that scans the OSM db for that tag and closes them or flags them for further review, but that's another issue.)

I message explaining how to do more complex changes directly in OSM could also be useful.

Thanks!

[dimqua]

replacing the POI with the new shop/restaurant that replaces it.

But it doesn't mean that we can't remove outdated POIs. Right?

[Rudloff]

The editor does not require any login so I certainly will not add a way to delete nodes.

However, if we can use a simple tag like FIXME:closed, I would be OK to add this. I just want to make sure we use a tag that is understood and accepted by the OSM community. (Maybe we could add disused:?)

[dimqua]

I think was: fits better.

https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/search?q=was%3A

[Rudloff]

Where is was documented? I don't see it on the OSM wiki.

[dimqua]

Nowhere, I've found it here: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Lifecycle_prefix

[hermann-san]

Untag a closed restaurant from vegetarian/vegan key words will also remove it from the OVM results list. Not the best solution for OSM, but good for OVM.