GeoNames Forum

Hello!

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I have been doing some line-by-line integration between the ISO 3166 and Geonames datasets. On the whole, the two datasets are remarkably well synced, which is a testament to how much work goes into managing Geonames data. Well done!

I have noticed a few discrepancies. For example:

ISO 3166-2 for Great Britain (GB) under GB-ENG has Northamptonshire split into two parts, GB-NNH (North Northamptonshire) and GB-WNH (West Northamptonshire), but Geonames only has the admin3 of Northamptonshire.

ISO 3166-2 and Geonames for Monaco (MC) simply disagree. ISO has 17 "quarter" first-level divisions, Geonames has either 1 or 11 first-level divisions, depending on how you count. Wikipedia lists 10 wards, which only partially agrees with either. There is also a recent change here, as Le Portier ward was added in Dec 2024 (recent!) after being reclaimed from the ocean (wow!)

I have referenced the manual https://www.geonames.org/manual.html and see that it is theoretically possible to add place names, but these feel like major changes, and perhaps controversial, so I wanted to ask first rather than just act.

What is the process for creating consensus around changes like this? When it is appropriate to makes a major change, for example to administrative divisions?

Thank you!

...and I look back, and now North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire are ADM2, and Northamptonshire is ADM2H. Nice work, marc!!

Is this the preferred way to handle such suggestions? If so, I've got a few more I can provide. Otherwise, please just let me know what the preferred way is, and I'll be happy to make those contributions.

Thank you again, to the administrators, whoever ye may be, for this outstanding resource.