GeoNames Forum

Hi,

in a recent blog entry (http://geonames.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/geotree-hierarchical-toponym-browser/), you wrote about the GeoTree widget displaying flags from wikipedia.

How did you do the mapping between the flag names and the ADM codes ?

Is the mapping data with the flags bundle available ?

thanks,
sami dalouche

Hi,

not sure if this can help you, but :
http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/782.page

regards,
sami dalouche

If it can help you troubleshoot the problem, the features that behave like #1128216 are all of those which do not have any asciiname in the dump. (null or empty string)

Hi,

I am wondering which name the 'name' attribute in the features dump actually refers to. Is it the preferred name ? The short one ? The NGA/american preferred name ?

What looks weird to me is that some arabic cities have a westernish name (like Algiers : http://www.geonames.org/2507480/algiers.html), and others, like feature #1128216 : http://www.geonames.org/1128216/%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%AD-%D8%A2%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%AF.html have a name in arabic).

Thanks,
sami

BTW, I discovered that the excellent ICU library has all the symbols for all the currencies for all the languages...

So, if you need anything more than this list, you can take a look at
http://www.icu-project.org/

Hi David,

the file that marc posted was a temporary dump. It does not really make sense to import this file as it may already be out of date.

The best strategy is probably to use the same algorithm as marc to attach the PPLX to their respective PPL :

-> For each PPLX being imported, search for the most populated city (PPL, PPLC, ...) within 10 km. Attach the PPL to this city

OK thank you !!!

Hi,

in Adm1ASCII file, half of the US states have a leading "State of .." in their name" (which is not true in the other adm1 file).

For instance, (Adm1ASCII) :
US.CA State of California State of California 5332921

but (adm1)
US.CA California

This is not the case of New Jersey, for instance.

Is there some logic in that ? Do you want me to remove the trailing State of manually of the US states ?

regards,
Sami Dalouche

Hi,

Does anyone know what exactly all the Junctions (especially in the US) are ?
http://www.geonames.org/search.html?q=junction&country=US

Do they really qualify as 'PPL' ? For instance, if you're searching for Cities around Los Angeles, all these junctions are more polluting (street junction, taylor junction, ...) than giving any meaningful result.

So, if someone has an idea of what these junctions exactly are, it would be nice to explain, so that we can change their feature codes...

thanks,
Sami Dalouche

OK, thanks

will be easier next time

Hi,

http://www.geonames.org/3013131/paris-04-hotel-de-ville.html is marked as 'PPL', but is in fact a 'PPLX'.

I cannot change this myself since
'error while saving:
the name is locked and may only be updated by users with a user level >= 2. Your current user level is 1'

So, can anyone with a level of 2 change it, please ?

thanks,
Sami Dalouche

Hey,

well, in case they wouldn't accept removing the copyleft, wouldn't it make sense for geonames to change its license by adding a copyleft ?

When you think about it : a copyleft could protect your project and make sure nobody takes the geonames data and releases it as something non free.

Another possibility might be to provide dual licensing. For instance, there could be a 'light' version of geonames available under CC-BY, and the 'full' version available under CC-BY-SA.. That could probably cause confusion, but it's worth thinking about it, isn't it ?

Regards,
Sami

See : http://www.zillow.com/labs/NeighborhoodBoundaries.htm

Does it make sense for geonames to integrate the data ?

Sami

Hi David,

I also plan to extract the GIS stuff from my code (that uses Spring/hibernate/ bleeding edge stuff) and would be happy to contribute to the project as soon as I find some spare time...

Regards,
Sami Dalouche

Hi,

District data is sometimes present in geonames as "PPLX" features, which means Section of Populated Place. (See : http://www.geonames.org/export/codes.html ).
You can find some of these PPLX here
:
http://www.geonames.org/advanced-search.html?q=paris&country=FR&featureClass=P&continentCode=

The problem I see with the way this data is structured is that the PPLX are not strongly linked with their respective PPL*. So, you basically have to pre-process the data to get the relationships, and the methodology for doing this is not really clear... I think marc said once in the forums that he was basically doing GIS queries around (e.g. 10km) the PPLX, sort the PPL's by population, and link the PPLX to the most populated PPL.

This should work in most cases, since there are rarely 2 cities that both have PPLx and are distant by less than 10/20 km...

Cheers,
Sami

Oh, also :

in ADM1 ASCII file :

EH. EH. Oued Ed-Dahab-Lagouira 6547304

Hi,

I believe the wisest thing to do is to stick to the current ISO codes and let the ISO guys handle the political issues.. If ISO says it is an independant country, then I think geonames should blindly follow ... (BTW, I thought that the issue was about algeria vs maroco's western sahara, not maroco vs independant ;-p))

Anyways...
Just to tell you, today's dump (September, 16th) still contains the error :
MA..066 Aousserd Aousserd 6547297
MA..391 Oued-Ed-Dahab Oued-Ed-Dahab 6547298

Regards,
Sami Dalouche

Hi,

(I cannot change the lat/longs directly from the web interface, so .... )

What is the main source for Canada's Lat/Longs ? It looks like thelat/long for "Saint Lambert", near Montreal is incorrect, and I wonder if other canadian cities have incorrect data too...

http://www.geonames.org/6138599/saint-lambert.html advertizes 48.95019 / -79.46636 whereas http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Lambert_%28Mont%C3%A9r%C3%A9gie%29 advertizes 45° 31’ 20’’ Nord 73° 30’ 37’’ Ouest .

http://maps.google.fr/maps?f=q&hl=fr&geocode=&q=montr%C3%A9al&ie=UTF8&ll=45.497684,-73.511581&spn=0.310435,0.6427&z=11&om=1 seems to correlate with Wikipedia...

Regards,
Sami Dalouche

Marc,

Creating a temporary RR code will be fine for now, I think.

What is your policy regarding the codes ? Are the Adm 1/2 codes the FIPS ones, or the ISO ones ? Or maybe a mix of both ? From your data schema, will you be able to tell, later, that the 'RR' region code isn't an official ISO code ?

Regards,
Sami

Hi,

In ADM1Ascii, there is a broken line :
TJ. Region of Republican Subordination Region of Republican Subordination 6452614

which should be corrected to :
TJ.RR Region of Republican Subordination Region of Republican Subordination 6452614

(http://www.statoids.com/utj.html , or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Region_of_Republican_Subordination)

Additionally, something like the following line can be added in ADM1 File :
TJ.RR Region of Republican Subordination

Regards,
Sami Dalouche