GeoNames Forum

the readme indicates that '00' would indicate a feature for which there is no ADM1 code, so I had assumed it meant something that wasn't in a particular administrative district.

I had also, apparently wrongly, assumed that the ADM levels would be nested.

In trying to build a tree using the ADM levels and some cities, I discovered that there are some odd combinations of adm codes.

I found '00' being used to indicate missing levels all over the hierarchy ( for an example look at Diekhusen-Fahrstedt in Germany), adm levels that appear to be missing (Deuxième Haut du Cap in Haiti has no adm2 or adm3 codes associated with it despite being an ADM4, and places like Bermon in Albania are listed as being within ADM1 '28', which doesn't appear to exist)

How can we make sense of these? if there are features other than ADM features that these need to be referencing, shouldn't that be done in a new field?