[OSM-talk] Name finder and home page search working again

[David Earl]

On 26/03/2008 15:14, Sebastian Spaeth wrote:
> I looked up my street and indeed:
> "Secondary road Zürichstrasse, about 1km north-east of Kämmaten"
> http://openstreetmap.org/?mlat=47.395633&mlon=8.605475&zoom=16
> 
> However that "Kämmaten" is a 3 house hamlet close by, while the town of
> Dübendorf (where I live) with 20,000 inhabitants which is about 1km to
> the east is not shown at all in the name finder list.
> 
> Would it be possible to prefer bigger places somewhat to smaller ones
> (if both are close by)? I am more likely to recognize bigger places when
> I simply enter a street name.

Actually it does give more context.

If you look at the namefinder home page 
(gazetteer.openstreetmap.org/namefinder), and also (for someone like me 
who doesn't know the area), it mentions that it is very close to Zurich 
too.

However, when Tom put the search on the osm home page he only used a 
limited part of the context information I provide.

I had a discussion with him this morning about this, and I think we've 
agreed that we will add more nearby settlements to the search results on 
the home page.

In your case, Zürichstrasse is apparently closer to Wallisellen than 
Dübendorf, so I'm afraid that's the point of reference you get in the 
expanded context. Name finder is based entirely on proximity; I'd need a 
reliable set of boundary information everywhere to do otherwise. 
However, looking at the map, I'm a bit suspicious about this, so I'll 
maybe look at this a bit more when I get time.

It's a shame the place nodes have been overloaded in the way they have 
in this search. Bus station and hamlet share the same node as do town 
and town hall.

David