GeoNames Forum

I'm primarily interested in users being able to select any populated place in any country when editing their profile and uploading content. Users would also be able to search for other users and content by populated place and country.

I am confused by the fact that there are multiple similarly named features - populated place, populated location, populated places, and section of populated place. I am also confused by the fact that there are some administrative divisions which are also listed as populated places, for example some of the London Boroughs.

What is the best practice for achieving the most robust dataset? If several of these features are combined, there is a great deal of duplication. If only one is chosen, populated place would seem to be the best choice (perhaps when combined with restricting the results to just those with a population size), but there are some things (particularly administrative divisions within cities) which are missing.

Also, if editing GeoNames, what is the best practice for inputting locations which are within cities. This seems to be the area of most reduplication and confusion? Other than administrative divisions, most other areas within cities are fairly arbitrary?

areas within cities have the feature code PPLX 'section of populated places'.

What is the difference between "populated place", "populated location", and "populated places"?

If you elect to get results from all three and "section of populated place" is there any way to prevent duplication in the output?

Where someone has entered an administrative division as an administrative division and as a populated place, is that appropriate or should the latter be corrected (e.g. some London Boroughs)?

there shouldn't be duplications within the feature class 'P'. Administrative divisions have the feature class 'A' and are another beast.

Best

Marc