GeoNames Home | Postal Codes | Download / Webservice | About 

GeoNames Forum
  [Search] Search   [Recent Topics] Recent Topics   [Groups] Back to home page 
[Register] Register / 
[Login] Login 
circular references  XML
Forum Index -> General
Author Message
NoSuchName



Joined: 24/01/2021 09:20:50
Messages: 1
Offline

Wikidata uses GeoNames as a source (via Ljsbot and e.g. Swedish Wikipedia), GeoNames uses Wikidata as a source (http://www.geonames.org/datasources/).

Perfect, fake truth created.

There is a lot of mashup pages out there that rely on geographical data. Whether they retrieve it from GeoNames or from Wikidata is irrelevant. A non existing item will nevertheless create about 500 matches in google search, weather, accommodation, POIs, distance calculators, ...

It is difficult to get such fake truth items deleted (in the internet). Is there any way to avoid creating such situations? At least for GeoNames it would be good, not to use wikidata as a source. As everything in the wikiverse, wikidata is generated by the crowd, don't trust.

I don't trust GeoNames either, coordinates retrieved from GeoNames are often rounded to the minute, which is not accurate enough. And sometimes are completely false.

As an example see 'Schneider Joch', which seems to exist but not on the offical maps of Austria / Tyrol.

geonames: https://www.geonames.org/2765804/schneider-joch.html (spelling, the real name is Schneiderjoch, it is not a mountain, but a saddle/gap, coordinates imho off at least 1'),
wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21865528
the world as seen by google: https://www.google.com/search?q=Schneiderjoch (>500 matches)

Now there is a chance that the local name Schneiderjoch does exist. Other features don't (although non-existence is always a bit tricky to proof).

Found no evidence for https://www.geonames.org/2764005/sulzenjoch.html in Vorarlberg

Was fooled by https://www.geonames.org/2603964/alwitzsch.html, which is not a mountain but a mountain pass and a parsing error, as the amap.at shows 'Alwitzsch.' (mind the dot) which is an abbreviation of Alwitzscharte. Alwitzsch for sure does not exist, but pollutes the internet with almost 300 matches (https://www.google.com/search?q=alwitzsch)
 
Forum Index -> General
Go to:   
Powered by JForum 2.1.5 © JForum Team