GeoNames Forum

Hi Robert

The capital for Kiribati is already in GeoNames, only it had Bairiki as its main name. I have deleted this name as it is probably more the name of the Island then the city and renamed it to South Tarawa :
http://www.geonames.org/2110257/south-tarawa.html

After having done this I am not sure whether it was correct to delete the name Bairiki as some sources seem to refer to the city with this name.

Best

Marc

Thanks Robert. This is a very interesting source.

Do you or your friends happen to know how to convert the Lambert Conic Conformal projection into wgs84 latitude and longitude?

I would need something like this:
+proj=lcc +lat_1=Latitude of natural origin
+lon_0=Longitude of natural origin
+k_0=Scale factor at natural origin
+x_0=False Origin Easting
+y_0=False Origin Northing

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Marc

Central America is normally not considered to be a continent.

Marc

Thanks. Fixed.

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Marc

thanks Isa.

will be fixed with the next dump. Together with "Tarapaca", which changed the fips code from 13 to 15.

Marc

thanks Isa.
Will be fixed with the next dump.

Best

Marc

Hi Xil

Do you have adm2 polygons or mappings from geonameid to adm2?

Do we already have all adm2 in the database:
http://www.geonames.org/search.html?q=adm2&country=mx

I am not sure how complete the adm2 for Mexico already are.

What did you use or what do you suggest we use as adm2 code for Mexico? Is there any official adm2 code?

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Marc

The question is the availability of free (and open) data. There is hardy any data available for a data model as you would like to have. So it does not make sense defining a data model when there is no data to fill it with. An empty data model is not so interesting in my opinion, I prefer a simpler model with sufficient data rather than a complex model with no data.

Marc

Chloe

The geonames search displays cities from both regions when searching with the term 'Normandie':
http://www.geonames.org/search.html?q=Normandie&country=fr

I don't know how your systems work. We could certainly add a region called 'Normandie' but we would not be able to include it in the existing hierarchy and I have doubts that your system would be able to do any thing meaningful with it.

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Marc

This is utter bloody nonsense. It is about GeoNames use of googlemaps. On the page you refer to the highlighted phrase is "geonames.org data is probably a derived work of Google Maps and is therefore not suitable for import in OSM".

You will find a couple of threads on this forum and on the geonames google groups about the same topic.

I am convinced it is not a derived work because:
- only a fraction of the places in geonames are modified this way
- the work is done manually, it needs understanding of the situation to locate the place on the map and the satellite image.
- the map is not copied exactly, it is only about positions of cities

http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/262.page

What is really weird with this discussion is that the same persons that consider this a problematic use case of googlemaps have no hesitations about osm's own use of yahoo maps. As much as I am convinced that geonames's use of googlemaps is not posing any problems I am convinced that osm is violating copyrights with the usage of yahoo maps (streets are copied exactly, some cities have even been copied entirely from yahoo maps). They usually justify it with some permission by a yahoo manager. Sounds good. However, the problem with this 'permission' is that it is absolutely meaningless. All this 'permission' can possibly mean is that osm is allowed to use the javascript library, something everybody is anyhow allowed to do. Yahoo does not own the data behind yahoo maps, thus no yahoo manager can give any permission on the usage of the data.

Marc

They have been added.

Marc

Hi Isa

The Government Office Regions are not included in the hierarchy as the are hardly ever used and they don't add any value to the hierarchy of the UK.

You find the discussion here:
http://groups.google.com/group/geonames/browse_thread/thread/ecc2154d8d0ba8f1/d753550fda4fe56d?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=uk#d753550fda4fe56d

There is also a blog posting about the UK:
http://geonames.wordpress.com/2007/04/11/ordnance-survey-administrative-divisons/

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Marc

To me it looks correct. AX does not have any neighbours, but it as an eqivalent fips code in the column next to 'neighbours'.

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Marc

Oscar

You are right there is an other issue with parenthesis. On the free servers it has been fixed, on the commercial servers it will be fixed in a couple of days.

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Marc

The method has been added with the latest release (yesterday):

http://www.geonames.org/source-code/javadoc/org/geonames/WebService.html#hierarchy%28int,%20java.lang.String,%20org.geonames.Style%29

Marc

Chloé

What exactly do you mean with 'macro'?

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Marc

The explanation is very simple. Wikipedia is a user edited database that does not adhere to any standards or formats how data is entered. This means there are a lot of errors and you are looking at a place in the desert where no correct articles exist. The only articles you find are those that have corrdinates that have not been entered correctly in wikipedia. (switching lat/Lng, forgetting a minus for negatives, etc). The errors are not the same in different languages.

Marc

Thanks, Nikolai.

It was not implemented in the Json version. Fixed now.

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Marc

Xil

What do you expect me to do? Why don't you fix the errors yourself?

http://www.geonames.org/manual.html

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Marc

There are no 'fakes' in the database. There are certainly errors, as in all large databases, but they are fixed when known.

Best

Marc