[Talk-us] Mass Pike naming convention

[Greg Troxel]

stevea <steveaOSM at softworkers.com> writes:

> You might also investigate loc_name in addition to alt_name.

Perhaps, but I think it's not really that "Mass Pike" is local.  It's an
abbreviated form that is widely used by anyone with occasion to refer to
the road, but what's different is that the abbreviation is also spoken,
whereas "MAIN ST" and "Main Street" sound the same out loud.  (Locals
might say "the pike", but that is only a valid reference with adequate
context.)

This is not about this road; Massachusetts is frequently shortened to
Mass in many contexts, but nobody thinks that is the official name.

I see that the Key:name page says:

  If a signpost abbreviates the name to save space, but the name can
  reasonably be spelled out in full, the name=* should also be spelled
  out in full.

which is pretty definitive in this case.

I realize the next bullet point talks about "unwieldy" but if we rename
based on that we should change the state name too and that's obviously
ridiculous.

I think alt_name is the best fit in this case.   What we are missing is

  abbrev_name: holds the standard abbreviation of a name.  Use this tag
  when it is plausible that people will search by the abbreviated name,
  but standard processsing ([link to standards for abbreviations that
  data consumer/searchers are expected to process]) will not find.

as an example, we might have a documented expectation that searching for
"main st" will find "main street".  But I don't think we can add "mass"
matches "massachusetts" to the standard rules.  However, a quick try of
nominatim on osm.org shows that

  massachusetts ave, lexington, ma

returns the road itself, but

  mass ave, lexington, ma

returns only bus stops.  ("mass ave" is normal spoken usage, but not
spelling it out in writing would be sloppy if Standard Written English
were appropriate).

The bus stop doesn't have any alt tags so I don't know why it matches.

But I convinced myself we need alt_name so searches for 'mass pike'
return the road in MA, not just the amusingly-named minor road in Maine.
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