Yesterday I replaced diplomatic=consulate_general by diplomatic=consulate with consulate=consulate_general over 400 objects (266 nodes, 131 ways and 3 relations) all over the World (see osm.org/changeset/98531944).

With the release 4 days ago of the v5.3.0 of openstreetmap-carto (see https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md) “amenity=embassy is no longer rendered, and office=diplomatic with diplomatic=embassy or diplomatic=consulate is instead (#4168)”. Therefore the diplomatic=consulate tag becomes very important.

As we “don’t tag for the renderer”, don’t consider this news as an argument but as a bonus in my motivation for doing the switch.

Let me detail the reasons why I did it:

• The tag consulate=consulate_general is approved (see osm.wiki/Tag%3Aconsulate%3Dconsulate_general)

• The tag diplomatic=consulate_general isn’t approved (see osm.wiki/Tag:diplomatic%3Dconsulate_general)

• The main “diplomatic” wiki page (see osm.wiki/Key:diplomatic#Values) recommand to use consulate=consulate_general

• De facto, the consulate=consulate_general tag was way more used than the diplomatic=consulate_general one (500+ > 300+ as displayed yesterday at https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/consulate=consulate_general)

• Earlier in the day I made several edits to run some tests, step by step. At one point I made the switch only in France. I then realised that:

  • Both tags are well interpreted by OpenDiplomaticMap (see https://anders.hamburg/osm/diplomatic)

  • iD editor is only supporting the consulate tag and not the diplomatic one

  • To the better of my knowledge, no other project is impacted

I also would like to highlight that this tag is a minor one: it’s only a complementary tag giving more details with office=diplomatic.

Feel free to give me any feedback about this move.

I believe the next step should be to formally depreciate the tag diplomatic=consulate_general and let it die once and for all. I’ll send a message over the tagging mailing-list to discuss it further.