[Talk-us] Make Nominatim results smarter - The search for New York City Metropolitan Area does not return any results

[stevea]

Tighten focus, please, Florin.  You have fired an entire volley of topics in this post making it very difficult to answer...where might I begin?

How Nominatim might "learn something from what we are searching" is something you might take up with Sarah (Hoffmann, its author), but even hearing ask you the question makes me think "what makes you think questions to Nominatim returning results are something you think you can or might analyze?"  And why do you automatically characterize "the way Florin wants to see Nominatim results" as "SMARTER Nominiatim results?"  I mean, maybe what you propose IS smarter in some sense (we could argue), maybe it isn't, it's also possible this particular slant of results in a certain direction could be simply your preference.

And an assumption of admin_level=7 as a "metropolitan area" is simply a show-stopper right there:  you make an assumption (and you know what happens as you "make an 'ass out of u / you and me / me' with assume").  Every single admin_level=7 in the world is different from every other admin_level=7 in the world.  Period.  You simply cannot make such assumptions without having the logic break down virtually immediately.

Think of it this way:  the "stack of values" (2-10 or 11) for any given 2-and-down is DIFFERENT from EVERY SINGLE OTHER "stack of values."  Making a comparison between "this 7" and "that 7" is going to become a logical fallacy, a "false equivalency."

Maybe rethink your question(s)?

Speaking from "reasonable knowledge" of the topic, "Metropolitan New York City" is, in the context of what you are looking for, an admin_level=5, just about the only one of these in the USA.  There is another, which is "the three Grand Divisions of the state of Tennessee," but you can see how exceedingly different these are:  the former is a "glom" of several whole-county-equivalents (known colloquially in New York state as "boroughs," at admin_6), and the latter is a glom of about one-third of an entire state's counties in a state-constitutionally delineated association similar to the other two like it in the state, subject to the redistricting of the state (which has happened once or twice, I believe).  Entirely different animals, even in the same country, for what are admin_level=5 entities.  And that's to be expected.

What was your question (make it one at a time, now that I ask) again?

> On Mar 10, 2023, at 1:48 AM, Badita Florin <baditaflorin at gmail.com> wrote:
>   1. Make Nominatim results smarter - The search for New York City
>      Metropolitan Area does not return any results (Badita Florin)
> And a whole lot more.