[OSM-talk] Can wikidata links help fight name inflation?

[SomeoneElse]

On 29/05/2015 12:14, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
> On 29/05/2015, SomeoneElse <lists at atownsend.org.uk> wrote:
>> how do we distinguish in the Abergavenny case between the two
>> established names and the "up to 7,000" (but realistically in the short
>> term a few hundred) translations?  That's unfortunately something that
>> name:xx in OSM doesn't give us currently
> You don't distinguish them, and that's fine. There may be many many
> more pleople using "Abergavenny" than "Абергавенни", but that doesn't
> mean that the name isn't established, at its more limited scale.


I'd say that whether or not a name is actually usable to help navigate 
to a place is a pretty important piece of information.  For example, 
when processing OSM data for my own use I'll try and drop unsigned names 
and refs from roads (there's no point in saying "turn left on Foo 
Street" if "Foo Street" does not appear on the sign). It's the same 
principle here - if there are 300 names for a place, are you really 
suggesting that I have to do an external check to some other database to 
find that as it's in South Wales, signs are likely to be in Welsh and 
English, so it's those language names that I need to look out for?

Cheers,

Andy