GeoNames Forum

Alex

Both entries are from the USGS. The first is the populated place (USGS id 880457, usgs feature 'ppl') and the second the administrative division (USGS id 885392, usgs feature 'civil').
The populated place is the group of buildings where people are living, the administrative division is the political entity. I don't know about Secaucus, but in many places the political entity is larger and also includes some smaller neighbouring cities that are there own cities if you look from the airplane or satellite but politically they belong to the larger city.

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Marc

Hi Tomas

I know this is a problem. There is unfortunately no easy and simple solution to fix it. The University of Stuttgart are trying to extract this relation between cities from Wikipedia. However, this will take some time and it will not be complete.

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Marc

Hi Oisin

I am afraid this information is missing. You can help us find the required data. The easiest would be border polygons from the admin2.

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Marc

Mike

I think it would be best to start an spreadsheet with all the information required so that we see what it needs and whether we have sufficient data to justify an addition to the database, the user interface and the dumps.

The language code have some consistency checks. It only accepts two and three character iso language codes and the pseudo codes post,icao,iata,fr_1793,abbr.

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Marc

If you know where a postal code is then you can look the lat/lng up on a map and tell us the correct one. You can also search a reliable dataset that is compatible with our cc-by license.

Marc

Laurence

Thanks for spotting this problem. 'Sanssouci' was indeed not indexed by the search index. It is now indexed, but not with the full text as this somewhere got lost when parsing the wikipedia dump.

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Marc

There are a couple of reverse geocoding services:
http://www.geonames.org/export/reverse-geocoding.html

You are probably interested in the find nearby place names or the find nearby postal codes.

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Marc

Hi Pavel

It is now in both files and I have also renamed it.

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Marc

Hi Pavel

I have deleted one entry for the Perm region and have assigned the other with the admin code '90'.

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Marc

jimtrs wrote:

Thank you.

Please update the following for the benefit of all users:

Change the "Santa Coloma" admin1 code from a "0" to a "7"; and

Change the "Xixerella" admin1 code from a "1" to a "4".

Was already done a couple of days ago:
http://www.geonames.org/recent-changes/country/AD/

Please don't hesitate to directly fix errors yourself. It is pretty easy:
http://www.geonames.org/manual.html

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Marc

Hi Noiv

The cities service is optimized to distribute the labels over the map for mercator projections. It does not support other projections.

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Marc

The official name is 'The County of Devon'. Maybe we should add the 'The' in front of it to have the full official name.

http://geonames.wordpress.com/2007/04/11/ordnance-survey-administrative-divisons/

'Devon' is considered a vernacular name by the Ordnance Survey, the official authority in the UK. We have it as alternate name flagged with as short version.

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Marc

There was a thread in the mailing list about this topic that could be helpful:
http://groups.google.com/group/geonames/browse_thread/thread/76c2a00ca502ae8a/b90452e8b528b2b2

Marc

Thanks a lot.

The countryInfo.txt file contains a link to this thread http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/437.page

I think this is sufficient for the time being and as long as the list is not complete.

Marc

'Devon' is in the alternate names, marked as short form.

I think the name 'county' is not so useless. Some users are even asking for it

http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/1386.page

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Marc

I think it is not necessary to add a column for this, a remark should be sufficient and more useful.

There are also other countries with multiple iso country codes:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pJpyPy-J5JSNhe7F_KxwiCA&hl=en

Marc

there is no general rule how to do this. It depends on the number of cities you want to display for each region. In any case don't forget that place names are not unique and the url built with the name is not necessarily unique, it may also change over time.

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Marc

mrjcleaver wrote:

So, if it won't take a long/lat/alt combination and return a street intersection, what specific information can it return from that combination?

The available reverse geocoding services are listed here:
http://www.geonames.org/export/reverse-geocoding.html

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Marc

I think we save us all time if you just use your favorite search engine with the search terms. You certainly find better explanations then the one I would give you.

Marc

it is as you say. You have understood the concept.

Marc