GeoNames Forum

There are currently 649 feature codes and 9 feature classes.

GeoNames is mostly using the same feature code as the United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

In addition to this feature codes geonames.org has introduced some new codes :

P.PPLG : Seat of Government (in contrast to PPLC, Capital)
S.UNIV : University
S.LIBR : Library
L.CONT : Continent
S.OPRA = opera : A theater designed chiefly for the performance of operas.
S.THTR = theater : A building, room, or outdoor structure for the presentation of plays, films, or other dramatic performances
S.REST = restaurant : A place where meals are served to the public
S.MALL = mall : A large, often enclosed shopping complex containing various stores, businesses, and restaurants usually accessible by common passageways.
S.ATM = automatic teller machine,An unattended electronic machine in a public place, connected to a data system and related equipment and activated by a bank customer to obtain cash withdrawals and other banking services.
S.BANK = A business establishment in which money is kept for saving or commercial purposes or is invested, supplied for loans, or exchanged.
L.AMUS = Amusement Park are theme parks, adventure parks offering entertainment, similar to funfairs but with a fix location.

S.BUSTP = Bus Stop,a place lacking station facilities
S.BUSTN = Bus Station,a facility comprising ticket office, platforms, etc. for loading and unloading passengers
S.MTRO = Metro Station (Underground, Tube, or Métro)

S.SCHL = Language Schools & Institutions
S.UNIP = University Preparation Schools & Institutions
S.UNIO = Post Universitary Education Institutes (post graduate studies and highly specialised master programs) & MBA
S.SECP = State Exam Preparation Centres
S.CCL = Centres for Continuous Learning
S.TWO = Temporary Work Offices
S.SCHD = Driving School

A list of the available codes is available here as html or as text:
http://www.geonames.org/export/codes.html
http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/featureCodes.txt

A statistic of the codes :
http://www.geonames.org/statistics/total.html

Under consideration :
S.GAS = A filling station, fueling station, gas station or petrol station is a facility which sells fuel and lubricants for motor vehicles. The most common fuels sold are gasoline (petrol) or diesel fuel.
S.PUB = Pub or Bar, an establishment which serves alcoholic drinks especially beer for consumption on the premises
S.CAFE = Café, A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or cafe. focus on providing coffee and tea as well as light snacks. Food choices range from pastries and muffins to soups and sandwiches.
S.SPMKT = Supermarket or Hypermarket. departmentalized self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise.

Hi Marc:
we can add new feature codes to GeoNames?
I would like separate the "concentration camps" from the cities.
For example, a locationid for Dachau as city and another one for "Dachau concentration camp". Now, it's in the same location.
If it isn't good idea to add a new feature code for this, I can use the feature code S.HSTS (historical site), like that the location:
"Bergen-Belsen concentration camp"

Thanks in advance and regards,
Isa

Hi Isa

I personally would prefer the S.HSTS. If you put the term 'concentration camp' in the name or in an alternate name it is also searchable with the search term 'concentration camp' and it is also clear what it is. We could also start to put the tagging functionality of geonames to some use and tag it accordingly.

Marc

Hi again, Marc:
don't worry. I will use the S.HSTS feature.
Excuse my ignorance about this, but exactly how is the tagging functionality?
I have seen that in a location, we can add a tag, but this tag, is a comment?
Where I can see these tags?

Thanks once again.
Isa

Hi Isa

The tags are used to flag a place name. In contrast to the feature codes and feature classes which are one-dimensional (a place name can only have one feature code) several tags can be used for each place name.

It is an additional categorization mechanism where the simple classification with feature codes is not sufficient.

I have tagged a place with the tag 'skiresort'. You can search for tags with the search :
http://www.geonames.org/search.html?q=skiresort
If you only want to search for a tag and not for other occurences of the term (in case you tag something with 'spain' for example), then you add the attribute 'tags:' to the search term :
http://www.geonames.org/search.html?q=tags%3Askiresort

And if you want to search for tags of a particular user (or your own) then you append '@username' to the tag. Like this :
http://www.geonames.org/search.html?q=tags%3Askiresort%40marc

This tagging stuff is not yet well documented and not yet exported in the dump.

Marc

Hi Marc:
ok, I have understood the tags. It seems me a very good idea.
In a future, will you include them in dump files?

Thanks again,
Isa

Hi Isa

No problem I can add it to the dump. I was just waiting for someone to ask for it. I try to keep geonames and the download section as simple as possible and only add new stuff if users are asking for it.

How should the format of the tag dump look like? Are two columns : geonameId and tag fine with you?

Cheers

Marc

Hi Marc:
I understand that in the dump, there will be a new file, not?
With these two columns is ok.
A doubt: one geolocation can have several tags or only one?
Thanks,
Isa

Just one question concerning the dump...

If the dump is meant to evolve, wouldn't it be easier if it used some XML format, that is both more readable and backward-compatible ?

This is purely a suggestion, the most important thing is that we have the data in whatever format

Sami Dalouche

Hi Isa

There is now a file called userTags.zip in the dump directory containing the tags. A toponym can have an unlimited number of tags, it can also have the same tag more than once if several users have tagged it with the same tag.

Hi Sami

XML certainly has its merits, but is also has drawbacks. It is for example much easier to load a flat tab separated file in a database or open it with a spreadsheet application. Even with the flat file we have a lot of users who don't know how to load it into mysql. I don't want to know how many users would have troubles with an xml file

Cheers

Marc

Hi:
Ok, it's perfect.
Thanks again.

Regards,
Isa

I think the current list of feature codes is not the ideal taxonomy for the wide range of possible purposes that GeoNames can have.

For example -
There is no way of specifying that something is a discotheque/club, or a bar, or any of the countless different types of nightlife hangouts that can be distinguished.

These kind of distinctions may not be very relevant to an organisation such as the NGA, but to the general public I think they are way more relevant than a distinction between f.e. a camp, logging camp, labor camp, mining camp, oil camp and abandoned camp...

My view on this in a nutshell

As soon as different applications/users want to use geonames data, they will ask for extension or modification of classification/taxonomy/types (whatever you want to call them). This can be endless, and end up with thousands of categories and counting. See dmoz, and what I wrote about it a few years ago at http://perso.orange.fr/universimmedia/nohi/enohip3.htm

So what we need in the long run is the ability for users to index/classify geonames features against a variety of concepts and concept schemes (this is how they are called in SKOS standard, which is used to express the feature types in the geonames ontology), and to extend those schemes in a collaborative way. Seems to me that it could be achieved through some kind of wiki-like interface, the tricky thing being to synchronize the geonames data base with this. This is an architecture to invent, but certainly the technical components are out there.

Following a suggestion made by Keitz, I have added a new feature code S.LIBR for 'Library' and updated all records of featurecode S.BLDG with the string 'library' in their name to the new feature code (ca 7000).

Regards

Marc

Minor point, but I can't query the full list of retaurants and mountains - I'm using a query and setting featureCode.