GeoNames Forum

hey i tried to search for istanbul with the geonames webservice

http://ws.geonames.org/search?q=istanbul&maxRows=10&featureClass=P&style=Medium

and i only can find the not anymore used ancient name of Byzantium.
Since Byzantium is not used anymore since a while (i believe around 1450), I wonder if that is a bug?

Any ideas how to get find the name istanbul?

Thanks

-m

Yes this was a bug. Thanks. The service now returns Istanbul.

Cheers

Marc

Istanbul "populated place" ( http://www.geonames.org/745042/istanbul.html ) is missing some of the alternate names that are in the "section of populated place" ( http://www.geonames.org/745044/fatih.html ).

In addition, several of these alternate names (those that are similar to 'Istanbul', like 'Estambul' in Spanish, or 'Istanbul' in German) should be marked as "preferred" (this can be checked using Wikipedia).

I tried to fix this by myself but my user does not have the right privileges.

Oscar.

Hi Oscar

Thanks. There was something amis. Another user has changed the administrative division to the capital and the capital to the section of a populated place. I have undone these modifications.

Cheers

Marc

Great.

Could you please set as preferred names all the names similar to "Istanbul"?

"Byzantium" and "Constantinople" (and their language variants) are the historical names.

Oscar.

Hi Oscar

I have added an new alternate name 'Istanbul' and set it as preferred name. It should not be necessary to set all names to 'preferred' since the old names don't have a language flag just like the preferred name I have just created.

Cheers

Marc

But for example, in Spanish the name "Estambul" is preferred over "Istanbul", so I understand that it should be flagged as the preferred name for the locale "es".

Sorry, in my previous post I wanted to say that in Spanish the name Estambul is preferred over Istanbul and also over Constantinopla. If you do not flag "Estambul" as preferred in Spanish, it remains at the same level as "Constantinopla".

No problem. Now I see the problem and I have marked the other languages too. What I don't understand is why you cannot do this update, shouldn't be.

Cheers

Marc

When I try to edit the alternate names a popup is displayed: "the name is locked and may only be updated by users with a user level >= 2 Your current user level is 1".

Oscar.

Hi Oscar

I have increased your user level to make sure you don't run into this problem again.

Cheers

Marc

Ok, thanks!