[Talk-GB] Online POI editor for place mappingparty-usabilityenhancements

[David Earl]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Barnett, Phillip [mailto:Phillip.Barnett at itn.co.uk]
> Sent: 21 May 2007 10:46
> To: Nick Whitelegg; David Earl
> Cc: talk-gb at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: RE: [Talk-GB] Online POI editor for place
> mappingparty-usabilityenhancements
>
>
> Misspelt, huh?
>
> I don't know how David spelt it, but actually, it's spelt Llanybydder -
> the 'th' version is an archaic Anglicisation that nobody really uses.
>
> See
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southwest/sites/llanybydder/pages/tour.shtml
> for a photo of the town name as evidence.

Indeed modern maps spell it 'dd' as well.

> This shows a problem with using NPE maps as a source - they're not
> really authoritative with regard to names, particularly outside England.
> (Though I can't speak for Scotland or Ireland)
> 'dd' in Welsh is pronounced like 'th' in 'their' in English -  that's
> quite a common transliteration in Anglocentric maps of the 1950's. This
> isn't confined to NPE maps - I emailed some nice chappie in the US
> military a while back to correct some of the worst examples in Geonames
> - he was very cooperative and changed them for me :-)
>
> There are other common errors I've seen from the brief look I've had -
> hyphenations that shouldn't be, and odd transliterations of letter
> combinations - of au etc.
> Dollgelley for Dolgellau,

Whover added this / corrected it has got it right, and NPE maps get it
wrong. I haven't gat that far north yet, so it wasn't me who added it.

> Brynkir for Bryncir etc etc
>
> Proceed with caution...

My intention is to cross check the names once I've passed across the map and
make corrections I can. That won't catch everything, but should catch quite
a lot of typos.

Also, once these end up going through the planet and name finder index, I'll
be able to produce a managebly sized spreadsheet of place names in a
particular area which we'll be able to review for correctness off the map,
possibly semi-automatically (I can arrange to look them all up in the
gazetteer and flag ones which don't get a hit for firther review).

Hopefully corrections will also get made as people flesh out detail in these
areas. I know parts of the area I'm doing fairly well, but not others. (I
actually know the area you're doing much better, but the Lleyn peninsula and
Porthmadog etc fall below 52 north and I'm very familiar with that. Not that
I'm necessarily going to get all the villages right even there).

David