ZIP code needed

[GPSRitter]

Hi all,

I did a search and did not find a thread on that.

While I was editing in Austria I came upon a problem where there we have the need for a field for the ZIP Code.
We have a couple of towns in Austria that are named Winklern (see google screenshot)

winklern.jpg (110.45 KiB) Viewed 641 times

Unfortunately all have really the same name, no additions in the name.
A ZIP code field would make editing more easier and more clear for users to search for the correct city / town.

regards,

[Timbones]

Can you not just search for zip codes? Waze uses other search providers for address searches.

via Tapatalk

[jasonh300]

It depends on how Bing has addresses indexed in their database. In the US, you can search a street and zip code and Bing will find it with no problem.

If your country doesn't use Bing, then you'll have a problem with this.

[GPSRitter]

It's not necessarily the search algorithm ... the issue is more on the editing side.

I was trying to add a town called Winklern near Pörtschach in Carinthia, but the editor tells me the street is to far away from the named town. It can not resolve that without a ZIP Code. As shown in the screenshot, we have a couple of towns with the same name across the country which makes it nearly impossible to create exact maps ...

regarding the search algorithm:
If I search for a ZIP-Code it gives me a complete wrong location ... if I look for example for ZIP Code 9541 (which would be Villach Land (and one of the Winklern towns)) waze shows me areas for my office location near Vienna. Neither Bing nor Google show any results at all ...

[argus-cronos]

According to another thread:

just make the state field available for intl server!

[Timbones]

I was trying to add a town called Winklern near Pörtschach in Carinthia, but the editor tells me the street is to far away from the named town. It can not resolve that without a ZIP Code. As shown in the screenshot, we have a couple of towns with the same name across the country which makes it nearly impossible to create exact maps ...

We've been waiting for Waze to add a 'state' field for non-US countries for 2 years now. Doesn't look like we'll be getting it any time soon.

The solution that editors usually resort to is to append a suffix the the district or county the town is in, to make it a unique name within the country. For example, Winklern (Carinthia) and Winklern (Styria). It's not pretty, but it works. (The one in Styria should probably be names "Winklern bei Oberwölz").

You may be able to find some specific advice from your countrymen in the Austria and Germany forum. There is also this page in the Wiki with how to Designate Places in Austria. For naming streets, see relevant parts of this page.

[maantje76]

It's good you get the message 'You can't add', otherwise you are creating à nice 'smudge'. You will then see the cityname over the whole map between these 2 cities...

[GPSRitter]

Timbone, this would probably work if there is only one Winklern per county/state.
In Carinthia there are at least two if not three ... Can't resolve the ZIP codes out of my head currently
So the only solution would be to add the nearest biggest city ... not very fancy ...

maantje, I understand the issue if things are to far apart. Therefore I`m requesting the ZIP Code field to seperate those. State field could help, we could use it for the ZIP codes ...

[gordonski]

I totally agree with GPSRitter!

In Germany and many other European countries a simple field for city does not suffice for defining places. Over here towns and villages are administered by a city or a municipality. There can be duplicate names within such a municipality but never within one village.
On the other hand, using only the township/village name won't do either, because, as GPSRitter pointed out, villages or townships don't always have unique names within the country or state*.
So, to have an exact (postal) address you need the street name and the city/municipality name + village name or ZIP code.
If Waze does not always want to depend on 3rd party services such as Bing or Google to find adresses (and there are rumors, that this is in planning), it definitely needs to introduce at least one more field for either the ZIP code or the township name.

Another aspect is the generation of traffic reports in the client. When naming everything to just "Berlin" that administratively belongs to Berlin (i.e. the city itself and all surrounding suburbs) you get a relatively huge area. This area contains about a hundred miles of different freeways. When there is a traffic jam on one of these, Waze will announce a traffic jam "near Berlin". Not very helpful, it might just as well say "Oh there's a traffic jam, but I ain't tellin' you where. Good luck, young padawan!"

In this case township name would be more helpful than the ZIP code. Further more a name would also look much nicer in the map. And in Germany ZIP codes follow a weird pattern so two or more villages can have the same ZIP code but there are also towns with multiple ZIP code areas. Hence I would prefer township name over ZIP code.
However an additional field to precisely define towns and streets is badly needed here!

Regards,
Gordonski

*concerning the state field: It would be cool, if we (the party of folks living on continents known as "rest of world", which by the way constitutes the vast majority of the world population) could be able to use the state field. Filling it with "other" is useless! Why not let editors fill in values here just like they do in the city field?