[Talk-nz] Place names

[Jan Sten Adámek]

Hi,

I'm currently also following the rule of using whatever is on the ground 
because that's the easiest source to verify and the most important source 
for navigation when using maps, and that's how it's generally done in 
Europe, but on the other hand, when a name officially changes in Europe, 
the signs are replaced pretty much immediately (which can lead to 
situations such as UK National Highways refusing to fix their design of a 
football because they would have to replace several thousand signs) so it's 
very rare that an official name is different than the name on the ground, 
and when it is, it's not just different diacritics so using the official 
name for the name tag would be much more confusing.

Recently, I see a strongly growing push in all organisations to include 
macrons so I am slightly more inclined to change this and include them in 
OSM as well, especially when NZTA now puts them on new signs. Wikipedia 
recently also changed the rules for NZ place names to include macrons.

I'm still unsure about cases where the name on the ground has incorrect 
macrons, such as Ōrākei train station is signposted by AT as Orākei, i.e. 
without the first macron (or Orakei but that are likely just old signs).

Sten