GeoNames Forum

Dear GeoNames,

There are a lot of placemarks around Leuven, Belgium. But almost all of them show Belgium » Wallonia » Province du Hainaut in their info balloon. This is wrong. Leuven is close to Wallonia but it is Flanders. It should be Belgium » Flanders » Provincie Vlaams-Brabant » Arrondisement Leuven.

It's kinda hard to correct this by hand. Any idea if this could be automated?

Also, all new placemarks will be wrong so could anyone correct this?

Thanks!

Hi Cimm,

this problem is not only for Leuven.
As Marc has explained in another thread, in border regions the reverse geocoding is not perfect and may locate a place in a neighbouring area :
http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/448.page#4499

At the moment, we have no way to fix it automatically.

To help fixing wrong places, you may prepare a mass-update :

1/ download BE country daily dump :
http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/BE.zip
from this page :
http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/

2/ edit BE.txt in Excel to fix wrong data

3/ save the file as BE.csv and send it to Marc to update the database.