[OSM-dev] Straw man design for OSM postcode database creator

[Robert (Jamie) Munro]

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Gervase Markham wrote:
| Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote:
|> As no one else has replied:
|
| Thank you :-)
|
|> I think this is a good idea, but if I am using random addresses from my
|> address book, I'm not sure that I will be able to know if the road
|> called "high street" that is shown to me on the slippy map is the "high
|> street" for which I have a postcode.
|
| Possibly not; but presumably they are people you know at least vaguely.
| And you can use your intelligence; most towns, at least don't have more
| than one street of any name. If you aren't sure, you can use some of the
| hints you suggest (which the interface should give you) or you can just
| pass on that one.
|
|> The namefinder code can probably
|> estimate automatically just as well as I can in many cases based on it's
|> ~ search results "xxx found 100m away from yyy". If the distance is more
|> than 5 miles, it's probably wrong. The other factor it could take into
|> account is the neighbouring postcodes. If there are no other postcodes
|> nearby with the same prefix, the confidence level in the result is low.
|
| Very good idea. It should present "five closest postcodes" and their
| distances.
|
|> On the other hand, a user searching for a postcode on the home page is
|> possibly more likely to know if the result is correct, because they will
|> see (or fail to see) whatever it is they are looking for. Perhaps if the
|> namefinder postcode system could return a level of confidence, and a
|> yes/no button, we could get a lot of postcodes out of it.
|
| I'm not sure I understand this. How would it work, in detail? If I just
| search for a postcode, say N12 5BQ, and the postcode finder knows where
| N12 5?? is but no better, and takes me there, and the person clicks Yes,
| what has been gained?

I'm talking about the name finder postcode results, not the NPEMap /
FreeThePostcode results.

I don't think we should show the approximate NPEMap / FreeThePostcode
matches ahead of the NameFinder results. We should only put NPE /
FreeThePostcode matches first if they are exact matches, or we don't
have anything useful from the namefinder (all the distances are greater
than 10km or something).

Can we set up the home page so that if NPEMap / FreeThePostcode finds an
exact match, we just zoom straight to it, without asking Name Finder,
(and probably without displaying a sidebar). If it doesn't find an exact
match we list the namefinder results first, with the partial match
listed last. Also, can we make the zoom levels of the approximate
matches much lower than for exact or name finder matches.

Robert (Jamie) Munro

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