[Talk-us] USPS Post Boxes

Martijn van Exel m at rtijn.org
Wed Sep 26 15:10:09 UTC 2018


Hi Leif,

> On Sep 26, 2018, at 7:16 AM, Leif Rasmussen <354lbr at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Martijn,
> I have very little opinion in which value of operator should be used, as long as they are consistent.  I think that basing the 'preferred' values on what can be found printed on the post boxes, however, is a good idea.  This methodology produces the following:
> * UPS
> * FedEx
> * DHL
> * United States Postal Service
> This system makes the most sense to me, as it reduces the amount of possible confusion.  DHL, as a matter of fact, can't be expanded, because it is the initials of the three founders: Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom, and Robert Lynn.
> "United Parcel Service" is rarely seen on post boxes - only the text "ups" is.
> FedEx is the same.  The company rebranded from "Federal Express" to "FedEx" in January 2000, making "FedEx" the correct value to use.
> For the United States Postal Service, the text "United States Postal Service" is always displayed on the post boxes, which seems like a good argument to go with the expanded version.

I see your point. If that’s what folks think is best, I certainly won’t take issue with it.

> 
> I think that the above values are the best, but would be happy to adopt any other values.
> 
> Regarding a MapRoulette challenge, how would that work?  Would all post boxes be converted to "United States Postal Service" before or after the challenge, or would me changing operator tags be completely unnecessary?
> 

Right now, folks would need to edit manually, and it would be in place of an automated cleanup. The task would highlight an existing post_box with its original value and ask mappers to change it to the proposed value. The advantage of doing it this way is a) we can keep updating the challenge to re-capture ‘wrong’ tagging, so the challenge would be an ongoing one, and b) it encourages people to really look at the situation with a human eye which captures the spirit of OSM. Similar challenges exist to normalize phone numbers across Europe.

Martijn
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