"No longer exists" quest for Telephone wipes historic BT kiosk data

[JoeyJoJoJr]

Bug example - https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/179995010

How to Reproduce
Answer "No" to Does this place still exist? quest on UK payphone - usually this means the kiosk remains, along with possible heritage listed status, but the phone equipment itself has been removed from inside

Expected Behavior
amenity=telephone and phone=* tags should be removed, or have a lifecycle prefix such as disused: or abandoned: added, while leaving all other tags such as listed_status=Grade II and kiosk=K6 intact

Actual Behavior
Node is deleted entirely, including surviving kiosk

Versions affected
Android 11, StreetComplete v63.0

[matkoniecz]

if amenity=telephone is no longer active telephone then just deleting is an improvement.

If it remains as defunct equipment then tagging it as abandoned:amenity=telephone is fine but deleting is still fine.

I guess the listed_status here is an actual problem. Maybe objects with such tag should be excluded from existence quest?

[JoeyJoJoJr]

posted this thread to OSM community forums to see if they can recover kiosk data https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/bt-telephone-kiosk-data-inadvertently-wiped-by-streetcomplete/142413

[westnordost]

It's not a bug in any case.

You were asked about whether the telephone still exists and you answered no, so it was removed. In cases where the presented answers are not sufficient (you were apparently looking for a "it exists but it is disused/abandoned" answer option), users are expected to answer "Uh.." -> "Can't Say ..." and leave a note.

So, is this maybe a wording issue? You apparently assumed the question only concerned the telephone within the telephone booth, not the whole thing. Ehm, how would you refer to the whole thing?

I guess the listed_status here is an actual problem. Maybe objects with such tag should be excluded from existence quest?

Also "listed" objects may vanish.

[matkoniecz]

Also "listed" objects may vanish.

Yes, but at much lower rates. So maybe SC check existence quest may have unacceptably high error rate.

Also, for destroyed listed objects mappers are likely more often actively updating them.

[mnalis]

Also "listed" objects may vanish.

Yes, but at much lower rates. So maybe SC check existence quest may have unacceptably high error rate.

I agree with @matkoniecz here. Perhaps it is best to just skip resurvey for such objects having listed_status=* (and/or heritage=*) tag, as in those cases the potential for damage is IMHO higher than the benefit of cleanup.

[matkoniecz]

And they can be still deleted from Things overlay for people interested specifically in street furniture.

[mnalis]

Alternatively (if we prefer to still remove them), we could at least make Quest (and its consequences) clearer, as I agree the question can be interpreted as pertaining just to telephone device, and not to whole booth)

We could do that by e.g. rephrasing the question from "Is this still here?" to something like "Do any traces of this remain here?" (and/or by changing answer "No" to "No, delete it" etc.)

[westnordost]

Well, is there any tagging that would be expected on a telephone booth but not on a telephone... err... stele? If there is, maybe a preset could be added to iD presets that would correctly distinguish a telephone booth from just a telephone. Then, it would be clearer, because the quest would look like this:

Does this still exist?
Telephone booth

[Uh…] [No] [Yes]

[matkoniecz]

I think that tagging would be like this for various variants:

amenity=telephone covered=no
amenity=telephone covered=booth
abandoned:amenity=telephone covered=no
abandoned:amenity=telephone covered=booth

(abandoned may be also ruined, disused and few more)

[Cj-Malone]

man_made=telephone_box