Dan, and all Since you pointed me at this list and specific thread, and were kind enough to mention me in the conversation ... http://geowanking.org/pipermail/geowanking_geowanking.org/2012-June/026199.html " ... if there are more labor camps than parking lots in the world, it seems important that this be preserved in structured data sharing."
... I think this needs further explanations about Geonames taxonomy, with its two level hierarchy "class" and "code". Historically, this classification comes from NGA, which was and still is a main provider of Geonames data See http://geonames.nga.mil/ggmagaz/, go down the page and unfold "Feature Designations" to find the current NGA taxonomy. Some codes have been added on demand of Geonames users, and some have disappeared default any significant use, but I would say more than more than 80% of Geonames taxonomy is a copy of the original NGA one. The number of features bearing each code is a somehow random consequence of how Geonames is populated, mainly by compilation of open sources, listed at http://www.geonames.org/data-sources.html, and quite marginally by wiki contributors. If there are not many parking lots in Geonames, it's just because neither data sources nor users think important to add them. And I guess labor camps all come from the original NGA files (Marc might confirm this). As said on another forum (Google+ exchange) I have with the last release of Geonames published a handcrafted mapping of Geonames features with classes in other vocabularies, including schema.org. See http://labs.mondeca.com/dataset/lov/details/vocabulary_gnm.html In a nutshell, the Geonames taxonomy is more descriptive (what is found in various data sources), than prescriptive (how the world should be organized). And, in any case, Geonames has not the human resources which would be needed for a proper and detailed curation of this taxonomy. But if there are volunteers around, I'm pretty sure they would be warmly welcome :) Best to all Bernard *Bernard Vatant * Vocabularies & Data Engineering Tel : + 33 (0)9 71 48 84 59 Skype : bernard.vatant Linked Open Vocabularies <http://labs.mondeca.com/dataset/lov> -------------------------------------------------------- *Mondeca** ** * 3 cité Nollez 75018 Paris, France www.mondeca.com Follow us on Twitter : @mondecanews <http://twitter.com/#%21/mondecanews>
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