[Talk-GB] Postcode finder updates - postal addresses, house maps and error maps

[Ed Avis]

Steve Doerr <steve.doerr at ...> writes:

>>'Postcode W9 is badly formed' - many streets are tagged with just the first
>>part of the postcode (the outbound code).

>>I do however want to flag
>>these as, while they are certainly useful, they are not 'true
>>postcodes'.
>
>I agree with the last point: 'postcode' is a misnomer in these cases. 
>This form of addressing existed for decades before 'postcodes' were 
>invented. 'W9' (or 'W.9') would have been referred to as a 'postal 
>district',

The question is whether we want to invent a new postal_district tag for these
and retag them all, or continue tagging them as postal_code.

I don't see the harm in overloading the postal_code tag to contain both full
postcodes and these short codes.  If we accept that as established practice, then
they don't need a warning.  (The warning doesn't say anything useful because it
is not possible to just go in and fix it, as for example when a postcode is in
lower case, nor does it indicate wrong data - just incomplete data, which we are
used to having in OSM.)

On the other hand, if we agree that postal_code (or addr:postcode) should be for
the full postcode only, then these should be pushed off to another tag and it
makes sense to warn about any remaining cases.

Of course, there is also a middle way where they don't get retagged, but not
accepted as correct either, and the warning keeps firing and people get used
to ignoring it, but I think that is less good than the other two choices.

-- 
Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com>