[Talk-us] Admin boundaries tied to roads

andrzej zaborowski balrogg at gmail.com
Thu Apr 22 21:33:30 BST 2010


On 22 April 2010 17:40, Apollinaris Schoell <aschoell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21 Apr 2010, at 17:12 , andrzej zaborowski wrote:
>> The signs are posted there by authorities so this is similar to having
>> access to a tiny piece of a map or database made by these authorities.
>> For maps people usually agreed on this list that we don't trust them.
>>
>
> are you saying authorities are wrong and we should correct what they are doing and follow tiger or USPS standards instead?

I'm saying we should name the objects what they're called, not what it
is written as in somebody's database.

>
>>> Is the wiki any better as a reference than what is in the osm DB? I could
>>> change the wiki and then will someone write a bot to reverse it? Is the wiki
>>> written with the situation in US in mind?
>>
>> Well one good rule is if there should be any rules then they should be global.
>>
>
> no not at all. US is very different in many aspects and has to be done different. several countries don't use abbrev names on maps or addresses. Most street names don't even have a st/ave/blvd/ct … postfix at all and so there is no reason to even discuss this topic. And in case they use abbrev it's only when there is a need to shorten. But all official use will be expanded. But in US it looks very much it's the opposite. abbrev is the standard use model and expanded name is the exception

Seriously?  I can't think of a single place in Europe where the
"street" part is not commonly abbreviated just like what you describe
(maybe Germany, but I wouldn't know).  Just look at some paper maps or
postal addresses, or google, you will very rarely find the names
spelled out in full.  In the UK it's pretty much like in the US with
regard to the feature type suffix (St/Ave...) ([1]) but people have
been fixing it in OSM for some time, in Germany I think they use Str.
though not sure how commonly.  In all the slavic countries "Street" is
abbreviated as "ul." prefix and "Avenue" as "al." practically always
(just look at Belarus in OSM), in Hungary it's a "Ut." prefix, in
Spain "C/" (although the OSM community there agreed to not go with the
popular forms and spell everything out and put in any optional
articles someone might possibly squeeze in when referring to the
street -- basically use the longest form, to avoid ambiguity.  So you
won't find C/ in OSM even though it's on the signs), in Turkey it's
"Sk." for sokak, in Greece it's something like "Od", I don't remember
exactly.  Someone on IRC yesterday asked whether they should put the
Greek names in all caps because the street signs are in all caps.  I
guess your anwser would be yes, they should?

Cheers

1. http://osm.org/go/erdGBcIdM-




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