[Openstreetmap] GEOnet Names Server

[Jon Stockill]

I noticed this appear on the "to look at" page.

It'll give you a huge amount of information very quickly, but isn't 
without errors. There are spelling mistakes, and examples of someone 
doing far too much historical research (Gildersome near Leeds for 
example is also listed as "Home of the Gilders").

Another problem is that the data on the rankings of "populated places" 
appears to be missing for the uk, making the selection of place names to 
display a bit of a problem (you can end up with small village names 
displayed, and large city names missed because there's no room if you 
try to handle the layout automatically).

Having said all that, it's a lot of data, it appears to be available 
under sane terms, and weeding out the small inaccuracies will likely 
require far less work than building such a database from scratch.

-- 
Jon Stockill
lists at stockill.net