[Talk-us] Hamlets!

[Serge Wroclawski]

During the TIGER import, small neighborhoods were imported as hamlets.

I am not sure what this means in rural areas, but in urban places,
hamlets are often just places like apartment complexes, or other
nondescript places.

They don't rise to the prominence of even a neighborhood (putting
aside the neighborhood discussion from last week), but they do confuse
the heck out of both mappers and the tools.

I'm wondering what other people's experience with the hamlets are. Are
they useful where you live? Are they nonsense (as they have been in
NYC and DC)?

I'm thinking that it might be worthwhile to take some kind of action,
either converting them to something else, or if there's really
consensus, deleting them.

I realized only after last week's discussion about neighborhoods that
the hamlets (which are distinct from nehighborhoods) are the things
messing up the geocoder. A neighborhood is understood to be a place
that's not often in an address, but a hamlet is a village, and so a
hamlet in the middle of an urban place doesn't make sense.

So, what do people think?

- Serge