[talk-au] General Observations.

[Ross Scanlon]

On Thu, 20 May 2010 11:01:43 +1000
"Brendan Morley" <morb.gis at beagle.com.au> wrote:

> On Sun, 9 May 2010 18:59:25 +1000, Ross Scanlon wrote:
> 
> >7.  Abbreviations
> 
> >-  Abbreviations in street names are a no no.  Read the wiki page at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:name,  DON"T do it.  At the moment in the Bunbury 
> area alone there are 380+ abreviated street names (according to josm validator).
> 
> I actually would like to discuss this a bit further.  Street signs in Brisbane regularly have the street type abbreviated (ST, RD, MWY, ART) and I think it is better to 
> record the "in the field" name as such.  Even with accurate capitalisation.

Not just in Brisbane most of Australia has street signs this way.
 
> Think tourists who aren't familiar with the way we do things around here.

I has nothing to do with usage it has everything to do with storage in the database.

If we tell a tourist to go to Alpha Street they can then enter into a search engine Aplha Street or Alpha St or Alpha Str and the search engine can then search appropriately.

If the info in the database is Alpha St then what's to say the it is not Alpha Saint or Alpha Strip or Alpha Street and so you end up with lot's of extraneous results.

By entering the full type of street, road, etc it's then just a matter of having an appropriate abbreviation look up table to convert from before searching going the other way is more difficult.  So entering Alpha Street will return the correct info but likewise so will Alpha St.




-- 
Cheers
Ross