Expand the list of place=[value] values that are included in search results

[jeffreyameyer]

What's your idea for a cool feature that would help you use OHM better.
The current list of place types used by Nominatim in search result is very US/UK-centric, modern, and does not enable the richness of place types known throughout the world.

If we could expand this list to something with more place values, we might be able to support local place types, and improve search results. See: #243

An updated address-levels.json file is included as an example of this. I haven't put together a PR, as I don't have local testing set up, but perhaps it could be reviewed for consideration.

cc: @1ec5

[jeffreyameyer]

Related to #640, perhaps the search results should include only the links to chronology relations, when they are available? Users could then refine/choose the relevant time for their search target from the chronology relation?

[1ec5]

I’m skeptical that such regionally specific values as rancho should really be place=* values. Nominatim is capable of indexing features based on secondary tags, so there’s no need to muddle the global place classification ontology by making it more specific than what data consumers would generally work with. (In California, I’ve been using boundary=parcel border_type=rancho on the rancho boundaries.) There’s certainly room for coining new place=* values for types of places that were once relevant in history but are no longer as relevant. But it’s not as though place=* was ever trying to be strongly tied to local customs or government structures anyhow.

[jeffreyameyer]

Understood on the skepticism & that expanding place may cause some problems, so I'm trying to understand them & also the role of the current place=* tag in the OSM-world taxonomy. Also understood that these tags may be hidden and representative of other things, but, given that metadata travels with the object & may be used outside of OSM, I think we should be careful to avoid factually misleading tags.

For example, Puerto Rico, Guam (ty!), and the US Virgin Islands are not US states, but all are tagged with place=state and show up in search results as "states".

Guam, PR, and USVI are all also tagged as admin_level=4, which is used for rendering. Wikidata, interestingly neither calls Guam a state nor assigns any sort of admin level.

Many prefectures in Japan avoid the use of place=* altogether, which means the only taxonomic categorization is in the text of the name, which seems like a missed opportunity for cultural support and accuracy.

"Place" is such a culturally specific term, it seems like a place where we would want to be expansive in our use of the term, especially if it is a locally-understood definition.

Also, if you look at something like Russian oblasts, which shows up as a "state" in search results, you might miss the fact that there are several other types of Russian places at the same level administratively that are not oblasts (such as republics). And, you'd have no way of knowing that - in the case of Russia, that there is a level in between some (not all...) of those places and place=country. In this case, districts, which also have no place=* tag & the place type is found only in the name.

One possible (not 100% sure) benefit of making this change in the search results is that I don't believe (🤞) that it impacts much else in the stack, although it might be good to update the editors with some additional values, but it wouldn't have to be.

Maybe we should start a forum thread?

[jeffreyameyer]

Also - another nice thing about expanding the place=* taxonomy is that it is orthogonal (afaict) to the boundary=* and admin_level=* tag functions, which also don't feel right to me (tight coupling), but that's a topic for a different ticket / forum post.

[Rub21]

@jeffreyameyer Can you drop some examples which places should be included in nominatim with the new configuration OpenHistoricalMap/nominatim-ui#2

[Rub21]

I did a re-import in nominatim(development) and the address-levels.json file works fine, we can test later this ins staging.

[jeffreyameyer]

Hi @Rub21 - can you search on "Oregon" and show me what pops up in your search results?