Talk:Key:brand

So a Burger King franchise should be tagged with brand=Burger King, and operator=<blank> or the name of the owner?

Distinguishing "Brand" from "Name"

Periodically there is discussion about the distinction between "Brand" and "Name".

As a suggestion: prefer "Brand" to identify the brand of goods which are sold, and "Name" as the name of the outlet.

In the case of fast food chains, these would normally be the same value. Both can be added, but "Name" is generally considered the more useful for data users: "name=Burger King", and optionally "brand=Burger King"

In the case of outlets selling a wide variety of different brands there is no value in listing all the different brands stocked: "name=Ambridge Village Shop"

It is most useful to add brand in the case of outlets that specialise in a limited number of brands. Examples might include motor dealerships: "name=Trotter Motors", "brand=Rolls Royce"

This is consistent with the current description, and the examples given, except for the introductory paragraph, which would read "Brand is used to describe the main brand of goods sold in a particular outlet".

--Peter Reed (talk) 16:29, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

No brand

Mention if

brand=none

could be used to prevent mappers from repeatedly visiting a place that one would expect to have a brand, but doesn't. Jidanni (talk) 12:47, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

No, this should not be represented like this. It doesn't allow to distinguish a brand "none" from no brand at all, rather you could use something like nobrand=yes, which btw. is already used 920 times as of 9/2023. --Dieterdreist (talk) 12:57, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

I get it! Like noref=yes. Jidanni (talk) 12:59, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Brand of feature vs brands on sale

I am moving this section of the article here, because it documents a suggestion rather than existing usage. Feel free to reintroduce these to the article when these tags are in actual use. --JeroenHoek (talk) 08:30, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

It is suggested to use subkeys to distinguish the brand of the POI itself from brands they sell, service or buy. Please note that these tags should only be used if the POI is dedicated to one or more brands. It should not be misused as a place to store all the brands available for sale e.g. in a supermarket.

Key	Description
brand=*	The brand the POI belongs to
brand:sales=*	The brand of products the POI sells
brand:service=*	The brands that can be serviced, e.g. a shop=car_repair
brand:repair=*	The brands that can be repaired
brand:rental=*	The brands that can be rented, e.g. equipment on rental at a shop=photo
brand:second_hand=*	The brands that are sold second hand, e.g. a branded car dealer might offer used cars from other brands

The main page now states that there is no scheme - but there is one that has been used already 20 times in the past few months. That's more than some "in use" or "approved" tags we have documented. I think this should be clearly visible on the main wiki entry, not hidden on the discussion page. --Mueschel (talk) 08:38, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

Feel free to document any in use values. This section looked like it wasn't doing that, instead only suggesting these keys. (The main page never stated that there was a scheme. It only stated that one was proposed.) --JeroenHoek (talk) 08:40, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

All of them exist in the database. I.e. we could just revert your changes. --Mueschel (talk) 08:54, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

Reverting would again state that those tags are just a suggestion no one uses, which is incorrect. If they did evolve into in-use tags, someone should document that. They'd probably have to go through them all to see which are and which aren't in use. If you have that data, feel free to document those that are in use. (The last two for example are used once or twice, so hardly worth considering existing beyond the point of a suggested use.) --JeroenHoek (talk) 09:11, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

There are requests to have the possibility to tag these facts. There are tags discussed, and they are used. Just keep them documented and they will be used. Deleting recent documentation just because of low usage counts just generates a mess of tags by users that invent new schemes because they don't find what is in use. Whenever there is a better suggestion, or even proposal it will be trivial to convert these tags into a possibly better scheme. --Mueschel (talk) 09:20, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

“Just keep them documented and they will be used.” We don't document suggestions in articles, that is not their purpose. Feel free to document the tags that are actually used (more than a handful of times), or create a proposal (which is the right place for suggesting tags), or link to the forum discussion (the article does this). Converting existing tags is rarely trivial. --JeroenHoek (talk) 09:26, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

By the way, none of the keys in this table are used more than ten times. This is proposal territory, not documentation. --JeroenHoek (talk) 09:27, 27 November 2025 (UTC)