[Talk-us-massachusetts] A simple check for addresses before the import

[Greg Troxel]

John Goodman <jg1 at qlam.com> writes:

> I'm not sure that's really the correct policy though.
>
> Consider Collette Road in Wakefield. The street sign says "Colette",
> but MassGIS and the town's own property assessment data have it as
> "Collette"; and if you enter an address with "Colette" into the USPS
> zip code locator page, it standardizes the address to "Collette". I'm
> guessing the residents know it as "Collette", get their mail using
> "Collette", and anyone searching for the road in OSM would also key in
> "Collette". So would we really want to have incorrect data just
> because some signmaker made a typo? (Why the town leaves up a bad road
> sign is a good question...).

That's a really good point.  I was accepting OSM dogma without
adequately questioning it.

Another point is that if there are variant names (even if one is
arguably wrong), then we should allow both to be found.

So perhaps name= should have the name that would be agreed on as correct
if you rounded up 6 residents, the town clerk, the assessor, the
postmaster, and the fire chief.  And, if there is another name that
people agree is used, even if wrong, then that should be in alt_name:

  https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:alt_name

I suppose the alt_name can have a link to the bug report filed with the
town :-)
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