Site policies discussion

The previous post on data validation and governance brought up some excellent points about site policies.

At this point, it's all very ad hoc and exists mainly in my head, as I am currently the only one making updates to the database, although I hope that that changes soon and others are interested in coming forward as editors.

My intent is for the site policy to more or less work like that of supercharge.info, because I believe that community has worked out the best practices at this point, although that's not to say that there may not be opportunities for improvement. Also, some things don't translate well from Tesla to the greater fastcharger fleet.

So I thought I would open this thread as a place to discuss what the policies related to adding/removing/changing the data on this site should be. This is meant to be a discussion thread, not the actual declaration of site policies. That would be either a dedicated sticky thread or an actual "About" page on the site itself. So feel free to offer your opinions and feedback here.

One particular thing I've run up against, and I think this is unique (or at least far more prevalent)
with non-Tesla sites, is when to consider a site Closed Temporarily or Closed Permanently.
This doesn't happen much with Tesla Superchargers (and when it does, there's usually a very obvious
reason and it's cut and dry). With general fastchargers, what tends to happen is that fastcharger
sites seem to become abandoned and just die. If the site is managed by a "reputable" operator
like ChargePoint, they will many times remove the entry from AFDC and I will detect that (although
I've also seen it happen that there are successful Plugshare checkins after that happens, leading me
to believe that the site host left the ChargePoint network, but is still providing fast charging).
But in the case of independent operators, the AFDC entry will persist and never be cleaned up, and
it's pretty clear that the site has been abandoned. What should the policy be for these situations?
Obviously a trusted individual that can physically visit the site and provide first-hand evidence of
the status of a site would be ideal. But failing that, sometimes we have to rely on things like
Plugshare checkins and apparent status on Charging Provider Operators' sites & apps.

Another interesting case is when it comes to Public vs. non-Public sites. This doesn't come up often with the Supercharger network, as the vast majority of Supercharger sites are public (the exceptions are a private site on the island of Lana'i in Hawaii, several service centers that used to host Superchargers, but which are now restricted, and certain sites at Tesla and SpaceX facilities).

AFDC has a flag which indicates private (e.g. fleet-only) vs. public, but I find that it's applied inconsistently.

A lot of these cases are ChargePoint sites. ChargePoint puts the site on their network (and AFDC) without consideration (or knowledge) of whether the site host intends it to be public or private. One key example is Meta (Facebook). They have an enormous number of fastcharging stations marked as restricted on Plugshare and apparently for employee use only. I have chosen to consider these as private and ignore them on this site.

A little less clear (but more common) are auto dealerships. Many of these are listed as restricted on Plugshare and comments indicate that the dealer does not allow charging for non-customers, or non-<insert make of car> owners, yet sometimes there are checkins that indicate someone successfully charged. Usually I go on a gut feel whether or not the station should be considered public or not, so I don't have a cut and dry policy here. I'm open to suggestions on this one.