jondrush wrote:In that case, most of our firehouses should be removed as they are not full-time staffed. I don't think that is a good criteria.

Makes sense, however, then the point of giving firehouses red area places goes away.

I have no problem with marking an EMS office as a destination Place Point (who knows, maybe the ambulance drivers use Waze?) and giving it a new category of "Fire Station / EMS" or some such. My concern is only that Wazers do not see a red destination on their display if it is unlikely to have personnel who can help in an emergency at any time of day. This was I believe the main thrust of the "Hospital / Medical Care" vs. "Offices" discussion.

It would be fine with me to change the guidance so that fire stations do not get area places. Or at least that part-time fire stations do not get area places, but that places an additional discovery burden on editors.

(As an aside, I'll confess I didn't know that fire houses are not staffed full-time. Fires don't happen just during normal business hours...maybe the old-fashioned approach has been replaced by an on-call system? I don't really know anything about it.)

jondrush wrote:we should include EMS in the name and restrict it to normally manned stations.

Can you clarify what you mean by "restrict it" (i.e. restrict use of the category, or restrict use of the Area Place?) and by "normally manned" (i.e., 24/7, normal business hours, minimum 10 hours/week, etc.?). The devil may be in the details.

Instead of Fire Station/EMS, how about Fire Station/Ambulance?

Using "Ambulance" instead of "EMS" helps in two ways.

First, "Ambulance" isn't an acronym and so is a more approachable term. If we used EMS it would be the only other acronym in the list besides ATM. Of course it is possible that a driver will search for EMS and not ambulance, but honestly I can't believe a driver in an urgent situation is going to search for either one. The whole idea of ambulances is that they come to you.

Second, "Ambulance" makes it abundantly clear that the category should mark the location of the vehicle, not an EMS office where the EMTs watch TV and sleep between calls. All the life-saving gear is in the vehicle, not in the office; even if you did drive to an EMS office and there was someone there, he would take you to the vehicle. I think editors will intuitively understand that a location where the vehicle simply "perches" for a few minutes or a few hours here or there should not be marked as "Fire Station/Ambulance"; using the more intuitive term means we don't have to worry so much about modifying the Places guidance.

It seems to me that "Fire Station/Ambulance" still satisfies the original desire, to expand "Fire Station" into a more general sense of "first responder".

I hope this alternative sounds OK!

PesachZ wrote:I'm envisioning many places for known ambulance parking spots etc. I don't see what place would properly qualify for ambulance.

A subset of the Places that would qualify for EMS!

According to the Wikipedia article on Emergency Medical Services, the term EMS by definition means mobile care; first responders who take portable equipment to the site of the health emergency and then transport the ill and injured to hospitals.

So it surprised me that there is support in the community for mapping EMS as static Places when they are by definition mobile. But in the face of strong resistance I am giving up arguing against this. Instead I was offering a more intuitive and accurate name for just what it is we are mapping.

I guarantee you that every EMS location is going to have a parking spot for an ambulance. Mapping "EMS" effectively means mapping those parking spots whether there's an ambulance there or not.

If we map "Ambulance" it intuitively means a place where ambulances spend the majority of their time. That will be a small subset of what we'd get if we map "EMS".

Alternately, we can revisit whether it makes sense to map mobile facilities.

PesachZ wrote:My concern was having random street corners gettingnmap because a wazers drove by and saw an ambulance parked there on standby, or they know an ambulance usually parks there between calls.

That's a valid concern. Hopefully the presence of "Ambulance" as part of the compound category "Fire Station/Ambulance" would mitigate that, at least for conscientious contributors.

To the extent that it doesn't mitigate that, the problem could be even more acute with "Fire Station/EMS" because an EMS office can be correct even if an ambulance is almost never located there. But, when the ambulance isn't located there, there's unlikely to be personnel or equipment at the EMS office to make it worth mapping or routing to. It's just an empty office with a water cooler, a TV, and a sofa chair or two.

PesachZ wrote:The argument can go both ways. In NYC FDNY*EMS are staffed 24/7 at a minimum by a supervisor who is a certified EMT or Paramedic, and they always have equipment there even if there are no ambulances present.

Interesting. To me, a facility that guarantees that a trained emergency responder will be on site with first-aid equipment 24/7 isn't really EMS by definition, but a form of urgent care.

So maybe the real question is what are we hoping to map with EMS. If we don't care about the mobile aspect (which is 99% of what the term "EMS" typically means) and only about the dependable availability of full-time medical personnel and equipment, then we should probably drop EMS and Ambulance and say "Fire Station/Paramedic" or something like that, something that implies what we are actually trying to say.

PesachZ wrote:Sidebar would there be any concern to mapping an EMS station which is only staffed on down time as a point? Are we only concerned about category abuse as an area? If so let's keep in mind that users adding places from the app, (those least likely to read the wiki ) can only add points, not areas.

My feeling is that empty offices with no equipment and rarely any people shouldn't get an emergency medical designation, either Point or Area. However, I'd be completely supportive of marking such a location as an "Office".

For example, one large EMS contractor is American Medical Response (AMR). If AMR leases an office for their people to rest, great, let's name it AMR and give it a category "Office" which is what it is.

[EDIT: To summarize, using the category "Fire Station/Paramedic" instead of "Fire Station/EMS" would, I think, draw a helpful and intuitive distinction between an office occasionally used by paramedics and the paramedics themselves. We are trying to flag where a paramedic is likely to be, not where to find the organizational structure that hires paramedics.]

Is it possible to add a place category for Nursing Home or Skilled Nursing Facility? Hospital/ Urgent Medical Care certainly does not fit, nor does Offices.

Thanks for the work on this.

Old: Scenic Lookout / Viewpoint
New: Rest Area / Scenic Overlook

Glad to see this one.

Old: Kindergarten
New: Kindergarten / Preschool

I'd recommend "Preschool / Daycare" since Kindergarten is generally in a primary/elementary school.

Old: Religious Center
New: Religious Center / Church

I prefer the denominational neutrality of "Religious Center" on its own, but not a big deal.

AlanOfTheBerg wrote:

FzNk wrote:

Old: Kindergarten
New: Kindergarten / Preschool

I'd recommend "Preschool / Daycare" since Kindergarten is generally in a primary/elementary school.

I kinda see this, but if it is a kindergarten as part of an elementary school, then School should be chosen... so just keep a generic "School" and change to "Preschool / Daycare"?

Yes, I meant that the Kindergarten category should be renamed to Preschool / Daycare, leaving Kindergarten out of any other category. I suspect the Kindergarten category was created in reference to the traditional idea of kindergarten which doesn't really match how the term is used now.

Just thought of one that really should be changed.

Old: Camping / Trailer Park
New: Campground / RV Park