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

[stevea]

Thanks for the additional more-local perspective, fellow mappers.  I've been to NYC a number of times and the concept of where "the concentric circles stop getting bigger" about where is the identity of "Greater NYC" never stopped vexing me as "nobody really has an answer everybody agrees to about this."

Expecting software tools (like Nominatim) to "compare to others" with some sort of performance standard seems "confused" to me, especially as "so is what Greater NYC is according to everybody."  Asking a machine to answer a question (as good as or better than other machines, supposedly) which humans don't seem to be able to cogently answer...I can't see the point, though maybe there is one.  Badita, any additional clarity you might offer after seeing us (and others here, I'm sure) who shrug our shoulders at your post?

Even the smartest software can't answer what is (almost) unanswerable.  Maybe OSM is "more truthful" (accurate) than the others?  Everybody agrees:  "I don't know, really" is a perfectly valid answer, and sometimes the correct one.