Misleading display for historic buildings in building overlay

[gdabski]

How to Reproduce
Find a building tagged with building=* and historic=yes, e.g. 1831089. Open the buildings overlay. Note that the building is displayed in grey, with the type described as Historic: building of historic value, constructed for an unknown or unclear purpose.

Change building type, perhaps even to the one corresponding with the already existing building=* tag. Observe after uploading changes that the historic=yes tag is gone.

Expected Behavior
Contrary to the description hinting at an unknown or unclear purpose, the type of building is precisely specified in existing tags. The building should be displayed in SC according to the building type specified in building=*. The value for historic=* should not be altered when using the SC buildings overlay.

Versions affected
SC 57.1.

[westnordost]

The description provided in "expected behavior" doesn't sound like a good solution to me, as then, it would be possible to add historic=yes, but not remove it again if one selects another type (for whatever reason, e.g. realizing a mistake, realizing that actually it isn't historic at all but only looks like it etc.). That handling would also be inconsistent when compared to e.g. ruined=yes - surely, ruined=yes should be removed when selecting another building type?

The best solution would be #5506 I think, i.e. have two fields - "it used to be... X" and "and it is now... Y" (e.g. "it used to be a civic building and now it is historic")

As long as that is not implemented, I would propose to change the description instead, make it either "Historic: building of historic value" or "Historic: building of historic value, regardless for which purpose it was constructed."

[gdabski]

I don't really get why a historic building cannot be an apartments, hotel, office or detached building at the same time. To me, historic is a value in a completely different enumeration and something like it used to be a civic building and now it is historic doesn't really make sense. The shape of the building doesn't change just because we begin to consider it historic at some point.

The description provided in "expected behavior" doesn't sound like a good solution to me, as then, it would be possible to add historic=yes

Maybe I didn't make myself clear, but I would not have SC touch the historic tag at all. Or at least not in (the current shape of) the buildings overlay, as one of options for building type. If it was to be editable, for me it would be something like a checkbox next to the building type.

[westnordost]

Maybe I didn't make myself clear, but I would not have SC touch the historic tag at all. Or at least not in (the current shape of) the buildings overlay, as one of options for building type. If it was to be editable, for me it would be something like a checkbox next to the building type.

Well, this comes from the building quest, which asks which kind of building this is. For historic buildings, it is difficult to say, so that's why the "Historic: building of historic value, constructed for an unknown or unclear purpose."-option was added then. (Building quest is not asked for buildings with historic=yes)

Do you think it made sense if the option was shown only for the quest, but not for the overlay? It might feel somewhat like a bug / inconsistent (but I do understand where you are coming from).

[gdabski]

I don't know about the quest, because I disabled it long ago for the very reasons that made you implement the overlay 😅

I perfectly agree that for buildings from before the era of modernism in architecture you often need to be a PhD in architecture or local historian to correctly describe the building types. I would myself not allow users to just slap historic and move on.

But that is not even the point of the bug report. I wanted to understand why a building=apartments + historic=yes is coloured gray not blue in the overlay. And why is historic=yes getting removed when I choose flats as a building type for that building in the overlay.

[westnordost]

So maybe "historic" should not be selectable in the overlay. Instead, buildings with historic=yes and building=yes should be displayed as red and the overlay does not touch that tag.
The building quest on the other hand needs this option to discourage users from guessing the building type when they have no idea, because it is a historic building whose original purpose is unknown or unclear to the user.

[matkoniecz]

I don't really get why a historic building cannot be an apartments, hotel, office or detached building at the same time.

It can have! This option existed as option in building quest for cases where building type is very unclear but it is clear that building is historic.

And yes, it is not ideal that right now in overlay you cannot make building=* more specific for historic=yes buildings.

Instead, buildings with historic=yes and building=yes should be displayed as red and the overlay does not touch that tag.

+1, just ignore historic=yes in overlay (at least until #5506)

[westnordost]

Question, what about buildings tagged with abandoned=yes and ruins=yes? Should this also not be selectable?

[westnordost]

ping. What do you think?

[matkoniecz]

Question, what about buildings tagged with abandoned=yes and ruins=yes? Should this also not be selectable?

Ideally? There would be an option to still mark their form and not remove abandoned=yes ruins=yes

But making them uneditable for now makes sense. Maybe allow selecting which would allow showing their situation?

[westnordost]

I mean, if the same solution is applied for these, they would be selectable in the quest but not in the overlay.
In the overlay, buildings tagged with abandoned or ruins would be shown as red (information missing)

[westnordost]

Alright, in the end I made it so that historic is still selectable in the overlay for consistency with the quest, but selecting a different building type when historic was selected before does not delete historic=yes but instead just adds the selected building type. Specifically selecting historic will also set building to yes.

This is because the description of the historic option in SC is "building of historic value, constructed for an unknown or unclear purpose".