Proposal talk:Improving Stables

You are probably German, where Stall is a generic term, but it doesn’t work in other languages, specifically in English, to use stable for different animals than horses. This will not work/find approval. —Dieterdreist (talk) 08:36, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

In UK cowshed is where cows are housed and milked, sty is where pigs live, stable is where horses, ponies and donkeys live, barns are where crops and stuff is stored and sometimes converted to a lambing-shed when sheep lamb, sheep generally live outdoors and normally only require housing at lambing time.

Building use can often be determined by casual glance - sty is often no taller than 1 metre, cowshed and stable often look similar but stable tends to be designed to offer greater weather protection and be of a height of 3-4 metres. Many modern sty's are single mobile structures which are regularly moved around a farm to make systematic use of grazing land. Proposal is not something I would approve. --TonyS (talk) 09:55, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. What about hay storage, is this also "barn"? Is "granary" a term that is used in modern farming? How would you call a place where chicken are grown (terms for the "housing" and for the outside area / both, if there are)? Is cowshed also used for places where bulls and calves are kept, especially calves without the mothers? --Dieterdreist (talk) 10:24, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Hi, I beieve hay is stored in a barn, as is silage (cut grass wrapped into large bales with black plastic sheet). I am less sure about chickens as there appear to be many production methods; historic term is hen-house, but large modern methods use long barns - barns is the term I've seen used - which tend to be buildings about 4 metres high and a length of 100 metres and 10 metres width (sizes vary widely). Grain was stored in granaries but with the increase in bulk storage and handling most is now stored in grain-silos (there was a tagging discussion about silo's last year). Bulls and calves - yes cowshed is normal, but often barns are temporarily reconfigured for them. Many farm building look similar externally and the building can be used for many purposes depending on the season or harvest or storage needs. I am a user of farm-auxiliary as a useful tag for farm buildings. --TonyS (talk) 10:53, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

I have also seen calves in a part of the barn in southern Germany, 1960ies style farmyard, maybe it is a common pattern. I am not a big fan of the building=farm_auxiliary tag, because farmyard buildings can usually be described more specifically, and it may be interesting/significant. building=farm_auxiliary is on a similar level as is building=residential, I would like to see this shift towards a building=house/apartments/terrace analogy for farm buildings. There may be various buildings for animals and barns (for storage, work/processing) and maybe huts(?) (plus some others eventually). In particular the animal compounds/buildings would merit specific mapping.—Dieterdreist (talk) 11:38, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

building value is about the look, not the usage

building value is about the look, not the usage. can you rephrase the relevant sentences? --Marc marc (talk) 12:23, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

It is not only about the look, it is about the architectural type, it can include structure, inner workings etc. —-Dieterdreist (talk) 18:53, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

More logical tagging

For sports pitches, we use a tagging scheme where we first identify the general purpose (leisure=pitch) and then specify for which sport the pitch is used (sport=tennis for a tennis court, etc.). We could use this scheme for stables and similar buildings too, i.e. first identify the general application (building=animal_housing) and then specify the animal(s) for which the housing is used (animal=horse for a stable).

It would make more sense for non-English speakers to use such a tagging scheme instead of the specific words for buildings to keep specific animals that are typical for the English language. Such a scheme can easily be extended, for instance for zoo buildings (building=animal_housing animal=elephant for the elephant house in a zoo). It would also easily allow to tag buildings used for several kinds of animals (sheep and goats are often kept in the same building where I live) as well as buildings for unknown kinds of animals (bio-industry buildings often look the same from the outside no matter which animals are kept inside).

The scheme could be introduced by automatically replace all building=stable by building=animal_housing, animal=horse in English-speaking countries where it is unlikely that anything else than a stable was meant. Same for building=cowshed, building=sty, etc. For non-English speaking countries where it is likely that the stable tag was misunderstood (Denmark, for instance, see here, the local community can decide. --rhhs (talk) 07:31, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

How would you then distinguish a stable that is used as a cowshed from a cowshed that is used as a stable? Compare Tag:building=stable#Examples --Hufkratzer (talk) 11:32, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Like you would distinguish a sports pitch that was built for tennis but is used for basketball? :) building=animal_housing+animal=horse should have exactly the same meaning as building=stable, so a building built for horses but used for cows can be tagged in addition with building:use=cow --rhhs (talk) 15:14, 29 April 2023 (UTC)