[OSM-dev] Namefinder - what to do

[Robert (Jamie) Munro]

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Tom Hughes wrote:
| In message <47963E4C.6090906 at arjam.net>
|           "Robert (Jamie) Munro" <rjmunro at arjam.net> wrote:
|
|> Ironically, the namefinder's own postcode lookup system works really
|> quite well (albeit slowly), but isn't available on the OSM home page.
|>
|> Try entering a postcode here:
|> http://www.frankieandshadow.com/osm/
|>
|> It works by the really scary method of doing a Google search of a
|> postcode, parsing the results for something that looks like an address,
|> then searching for the address.
|>
|> It does give false positives, though. So if you search for a postcode of
|> a street that is not in the database, it will often find a street with a
|> similar name somewhere else in the country.
|
| I looked at it when David first implemented it, but I decided it
| wasn't reliable enough to go on the main site I think.

I think it would be better if the site said "I'm not sure about this,
but the postcode /might/ be this street" and make a complete guess even
if that is completely wrong, rather than return no result. If the end
user could be asked "Is this the right location Yes / No?" and we
collect that information, that would be even better. If 2 or 3 people
say yes to a postcode, we could add it to the database. If someone says
no, we could log it as somewhere that needs to be found and surveyed.

It's not going to be as good as the commercial sites, but that's already
the case no matter what we do for the time being. If we can show casual
browsers that we have some information, but not much, and their yes/no
answer to the question "is this the right place" is appreciated, we will
be providing a shallow learning curve for them into the world of
collaborative mapping.

Robert (Jamie) Munro
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