Render leisure=hackerspace

[pantierra]

Adds rendering for leisure=hackerspace on nodes and closed ways ("areas") with an icon based on the hacker glider shop color. The icon and name label are rendered at z17 and up, similar to other amenities.

This PR includes the first of the following symbols. Please let me know if you had a different preference of icon or colour and I would be happy to adjust.

[imagico]

Thanks for the suggestion. I would be against this in this form for the following reasons:

• the definition of leisure=hackerspace is fairly vague and largely overlaps with amenity=social_centre and amenity=community_centre. There does not appear to be a clear delineation towards these.
• the symbol is not going to be intuitively understandable for the majority of map users, it would essentially be an insider code for those who know it but useless and confusing for most.
• we need to keep the number of distinct specialty symbols down for this style to stay usable and maintainable - see Too many icons #3635, so rendering something as narrow in meaning as this this with a unique symbol is not a good idea. The only suitable way i see is integrating it into a broader class of features with a common symbol - which however would still require a clear definition and use according to it.

[pantierra]

I can follow you arguments, @imagico. What about rendering just as a dot, and render the name text? This would allow hackerspace at least to appear on the main layer.

[imagico]

I am not sure this would provide constructive feedback to mappers in the current situtation. The whole tagging landscape in this domain seems very fluid. Looking at the use of leisure=hackerspace there are standalone uses of the tag as well as combinations with the mentioned amenity=social_centre and amenity=community_centre but i have also seen combinations with amenity=coworking_space (#1628, which itself overlaps meaning wise with office=coworking) - possibly indicating that those are more commercial workshops with digital manufacturing infrastructure for rent.

My impression is that the whole domain needs some work in properly defining the meaning and the limits of the different tags independent of the culture specific interpretation of certain English language terms. Like is a community workshop for repairing and maintaining farming equipment a leisure=hackerspace? Is it not because it is not digital or is it not because it is not used as a leisure activity? In general i think the whole domain (community infrastructure for common use and cooperation) is a worthy field to render in this style - maybe even to the level that we can throw out some less important things for it. But doing so would require there to be well defined tags that are used consistently according to a broadly accepted meaning.

[jeisenbe]

I read up on the meaning of "hackerspace" on Wikipedia, and it's all rather confusing:

"A hackerspace is a community-operated, often "not for profit", workspace where people with common interests, such as computers, machining, technology, science, digital art, or electronic art, can meet, socialize and collaborate. Hackerspaces are comparable to other community-operated spaces with similar aims and mechanisms such as Fab Lab, men's sheds, and commercial "for-profit" companies."

This could include all sorts of clubs and workspaces, in theory, and Wikipedia goes on to list spaces in public libraries, schools and universities as options, commercial hackerspaces (for-profit), "Men's sheds" in Australia, and other variations. Some people think this is different than a "makerspace", which involves creating physical things via machining or 3D printin and such, rather than just software, but this is debated. Some hackerspaces seem to be co-working places, others are more like social clubs. Some are democratic, some are operated by a "benevolent dictator for life", others are commercial for-profit places.

It's hard to see how all that can fit under leisure=hackerspace.

[matthijsmelissen]

We rejected rendering hacker spaces in #451 and #1693.

[pantierra]

I can understand the doubts about the icon! But not even considering to render hackerspaces with a dot and a name is not nice. It will lead to bad tagging (people will put anything so it gets rendered) and this way the carto layer hides community spaces over any commercial place such as shops and offices.

[jeisenbe]

I believe we would be happy to render more types of community spaces, but it's important that the tags are well designed and clearly defined. As I mentioned, the definition of "hackerspace" seems to include community centers and clubs, as well as commercial co-working spaces, and it's also not clear what sort of activities are required to define a hackerspace versus some other sort of social or community space.

It was also mentioned that the features are frequently also tagged with more common tags like amenity=social_centre, amenity=community_centre and office=coworking.

We currently render amenity=community_centre with a special icon, and all values of office (including coworking) with a dot and text label.

I would be open to considering amenity=social_centre for rendering, if we can clarify when it is needed instead of the more common tag amenity=community_centre.