We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

Post by Aloisius » Fri, Aug 23, 2024, 9:33 PM UTC

incompatible wrote: post #109

londons_explore wrote: post #71

The simple solution here is a threat from the government to Royal Mail. Give us your postcode file for free, or we will simply make up a new numbering scheme, send an address card to every house telling them of their new number with their next council tax bill, and postcodes will become a thing of the past. The new numbering scheme will be unique to each house too, and have a check digit so the number alone is suffic…

Just modify the law so that databases of postal addresses are not copyrightable.

Post by numpad0 » Fri, Aug 23, 2024, 9:44 PM UTC

tomsmeding wrote: post #66

gabesullice wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cautionary example of how data meets reality… My address in France is listed in the BAN… but only to the granularity of my street number (e.g., 123 Main St.). Unfortunately, that number corresponds to at least 7 different structures, 5 of which are apartment buildings. Of those 5 buildings, each has multiple stairwells with their own door and no line of communication between them—they might as well be separate buil…

That sounds like chaos. Who thought constructing multiple apartment buildings without any kind of sensible post code or address was a good idea? Sure, this being reality BAN does not apparently meet reality, but it does sound like someone had the opportunity to keep reality sane here, and they didn't.

Post by gopher_space » Fri, Aug 23, 2024, 9:50 PM UTC

gabesullice wrote: post #167

Propelloni wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like bad design by the property developer and a sloppy building authority. The first is corroborated by the lack of unit numbers. Who does such a thing? The BAN actually only tracks down to the plot level, so I assume all your structures are on the same plot. From there on it is the building authorities job to check building plans and to enter the substructures into the cadastre, where they are usually le…

You could be right, but I think it's a little beside the point. The challenge illustrated in the blog post is that it's practically impossible to build a really accurate address dataset since the real world is messy for the reasons you listed. Just like falsehoods programmers believe about names [1], you shouldn't put much faith in anything that claims to normalize addresses either. As other commenters have said in t…

Post by zeristor » Fri, Aug 23, 2024, 9:59 PM UTC

NeoTar wrote: post #48

Some context, for people not located in the UK - A full British postcode typically aims to cover around 15 buildings (sometime a single building, sometimes a street of 50 houses). This is in contrast to many other postal code systems which cover relatively broad areas). Or to put it another way - UK - 2,643,732 codes, 1 code per 25 people, USA - 41,700 codes, 1 code per 8000 people, Germany - 8,200 codes, 1 code per…

Post by kwhitefoot » Fri, Aug 23, 2024, 10:05 PM UTC

ryukoposting wrote: post #235

rivo wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some larger retail stores in Germany ask you for your postcode during checkout, presumably to learn a bit about their customer base. I don't mind telling them mine, there are about 16K people with the same postcode. But I'm pretty sure I would not tell them if I was one of the two forest rangers in Reinhardswald. (And yes, I do pay cash whenever I can.)

Interesting, is the German postcode not used for transaction validation? I know the American payment processors definitely use ZIP codes for validation - see anecdote 1. That said, there are definitely situations where the payment processors don't require the ZIP code - see anecdote 2. Anecdote 1: When I worked in food service as a kid, I used card terminals that connected directly to a phone line. I remember a coupl…