[Photon] Reverse lookup can be inaccurate

[marc tobias]

Can you list a couple of example of the input (or full URL), what it
returns and what you'd expect it to return? From your description it's
not clear if we're talking about missing or inaccurate data or an
issue with the search engine.

https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/reverse.php?format=html&lat=-7.5164331795745065&lon=18.632812500000004&zoom=5
has a visual playground to click around. Choose zoom 5 = state. The
smaller red circle is the search position, the larger blue circle is
the result returned.

https://wambachers-osm.website/boundaries/ is a project for viewing
and downloading administrative boundaries. 2 = country, 4 = state.
This could be useful to identify missing boundaries.

Adding missing boundaries is usally a task for local mappers. Not
every government has open data and licenses need to be inspected
first. There's a recent interview with mappers from Kenya how
that looks "on the ground" and how others can help.
https://blog.opencagedata.com/tagged/countryprofile

If the issue is the search engine it should be filed in
https://github.com/komoot/photon/issues

I pointed to nominatim, that's a different search engine. Komoot
imports data from Nominatim dumps. If your usecase is reverse
geocodig to state level (and not e.g. search-as-you-type) it might
be an alternative here.

marc tobias