I've seen some editors go a little OTT on suburbs in small towns but when it comes to navigation surburbs are often a key reference point.

London is an extreme example (after all it's just a big collection of villages really ) but it stands true across the whole country.

If you stopped to ask directions chances are people would try and key you in to the rough area by suburb.

I don't object to the comma syntax but it feels less formal than the parenthesis () especially when we're encouraging UK editors to consult a Gazetteer to see if a county is even necessary. A comma might feel like just typing out an address and become the norm rather than the exception.

I'd still like to propose the square bracket format for surburbs not least if we have lost some city information since the freeze it'd be a good time to reaffirm what I think would be a clearer practice than putting a city name where normally we put county.

I've been attempting to extract Administrative Boundary data from the Open Street Map data file for the UK to allow you to quickly see the edges of where their data suggests the city boundary should end.
It's visible on their map but hidden amongst all the noise. So I was hoping the filtering tool would help.
No luck so far but if I do get a clean map with just roads and admin boundaries ill make sure to share it.

Whilst the punctuation change I suggested might seem superfluous to the existing editing guidance it was partially driven not just simply from the fact the existing guidance isn't always being adhered to but more that during navigation in unfamiliar areas I felt it would be clearer that you were being shown a suburb rather than anything else.
But maybe I'm pandering to the remote control generation who should know their counties better.

I'm with Tim on the comma separation it would also look a lot cleaner

Pip


NI area manager
Waze Beta - iPhone 4s iOS 6.1.2 not jail broken

I agree, format for suburbs should be different for counties.
My preferred punctuation for suburbs would be a comma (,) - for example: Seacroft, Leeds.
Matches the address format more closely too.

Not everyone likes this though.

dknight212 wrote:Didn't the Post Office/Royal Mail discontinue the use of postal counties?

Yes. In 1996.

via mobile

[Topic now split into its own thread]

On "if/how we should name suburbs", I guess it depends on what we think suburbs will be useful for:

- they appear on the map, already have local context so a suffix isn't required.
- traffic reports, which are also local and benefit from being concise. Good for ring roads.
- not (currently) used for address searches, but will one day. Do most users not search by postcode?

I've kept York as a single city, as it is small and I couldn't see what benefit suburbs would bring.
Leeds, on the other hand, is large metropolis mostly made up old towns merged together.

jbjon - you can see the admin boundaries on the OS Map Viewer (top-right corner). YMMV.
It would be nice to be able to show boundaries directly in the editor, but I've not figure out how yet.

CTCNetwork wrote:it would have been nice if someone had mentioned that the county suffix roundup was going to actually obliterate city/suburb naming convention as well.

It was an unforeseen consequence. My apologies.

If it's that big an issue for you, we can change them back. But, as Nottingham will probably become a county by itself, we'll want to remove all suffixes from the suburbs after then anyway.

(Canada has recently got their 'states', and we've provided details of UK counties to Waze. I'm hoping it won't be another 3 years before we get them...)

Waze have our county data, and have said they will start importing it...

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I'm with Darren on this one.

iainhouse wrote:I suggest we stick to what's in the Wiki:

• <Town> if it's a unique town name in the Gazeteer
• If there are duplicates:
  • <Town> for the largest
  • <Town> (<County>) for any others
• <Suburb> (<City>) for any suburbs (and I just pray there are no duplicated suburbs anywhere in a city )

You didn't read the wiki very hard!

When I updated the Postal vs Actual Addresses bit, I used the example of Belmont, where both should have the appropriate Postal county suffixes as Belmont (London) creates a duplicate.

I very much feel that it's the Post Town of the locality which should be used to differentiate, rather than the specific city (which is usually the Post Town, but not necessarily - I think there are some examples around Newport/Chepstow area where there's some confusion), or the County where the locality is a defined Post Town in its own right.