Use of abbrevations, i.e MA vs Massachusetts and Rd vs Road

[Bill Meier]

What is the correct form of the state name? In the state drop down you often see "MA" as well as "Massachusetts" ... When the address is displayed, it also does seem to retain the name as selected. The long or short name... Seems like the state names should be consistent? Either all abbreviations or all spelled out? But since the drop down has both variants...

The same same with road abbreviations. The guidelines say spell out "Road" but the drop down for a given road can be "North Rd" as well as "North Road" ... if the former is not in line with the guidelines, why is it listed as a choice?

From what I have seen no automated map bot goes around and fixes these up. So, what's up with these naming issues? Should we be changing them to be more consistent? I know "Road" is correct, but I don't know if the state abbreviation is favored over the long name. Suggestions?

Perhaps a related question is how do you get "North Rd" out of the drop down which also contains "North Road" ? An example http://goo.gl/tZzN4

Thanks

[Andrew Sawyer]

Bill, great questions. The long form version is always preferred, such as North Road and Massachusetts. Abbreviations usually come from imports and other sources. The drop downs have the abbreviation because it retains the current selection. If they didn't show the abbreviation and you selected another road name choice the abbreviation would disappear and/or the address would become corrupted. I wouldn't worry about getting the abbreviation out of the drop down, rather you should select a fully-spelled out name when the current one is abbreviated. I'm not sure why the states aren't auto fixed but my guess is Google doesn't want to potentially corrupt the data (further). Better to interpolate slightly wrong data correctly most of the time than only being able to do so part of the time. Hopefully that answers your question.

When in doubt: go for a fully spelled name.

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From: Bill Meier via General Map Maker <google-mapmaker+noreply-APn2wQeW...@googlegroups.com>

Sender: General Map Maker on behalf of Bill Meier <google-...@googlegroups.com>

Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2013 06:08:46 -0800 (PST)

To: <google-...@googlegroups.com>

ReplyTo: General Map Maker on behalf of Bill Meier <google-...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Use of abbrevations, i.e MA vs Massachusetts and Rd vs Road

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[Bill Meier]

If I am adding a place I will select the long form of the name but is it worth fixing existing short names? My guess is Google is pretty good at knowing abbreviations "rd" and "MA" and it is not worth the time to manually correct them illnesses you are editing the feature anyway?

Yes it does seem very well defined to me that a Goggle bot could fix simple state names like "MA" as that seems to not be ambiguous at all.. ? But as they say IIWII "it is what it is" ... And probably not a big deal....

[DdDave]

The 2 letter state abbreviations actually did cause problems in the past, but thankfully the bug was eventually fixed.

I agree that if you are making change to the feature for other reasons you should fix the address to long form, but I wouldn't make edit just to correct the address short forms.

[Troy Tiscareno]

I'm being FORCED to make these changes in a lot of cases, because any address that doesn't match the pull-down options (all long-form names), or has "extra" information in the street name, such as an apartment or suite number, is considered "corrupt" and the marker/POI cannot be moved or edited until the address entries are first fixed. Once those edits are approved, you can add info, fix Categories, move the marker, etc. If you try to edit a POI with a bad address, it will error out. It took me a while to figure that out.

So, IMO, if you're willing to do it, we'd all be better off with all of the POIs fixed.  Apartment and suite numbers should be moved to the second address line (ABOVE the street name line in GMM, rather than below), and that's a free-form entry box. Streets should be selected from the pull-down list, and if the existing street name isn't correct (such as Road abbreviated as Rd), it will go to the bottom of the list; you should pick the similar street name from the top of the list that is long-form. The State should also be selected from the pull-down in long-form.

[Geoffrey Perez]

One thing to note as a workaround: if the street name is not available in the dropdown, please add it manually to the second address line AND mention in the comments that it is not available, especially if previous edits to the feature had the correct address. The Google Reviewers should be able to "Accept" the edit (instead of the regular "Publish" or "Deny"). I must stress this: please only use this workaround if the street name is not available; if it is, you'll have to use it.

Again, remember to mention it in the comments.

On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 4:19 PM, Troy Tiscareno via General Map Maker <google-mapmaker+noreply-APn2wQeo...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I'm being FORCED to make these changes in a lot of cases, because any address that doesn't match the pull-down options (all long-form names), or has "extra" information in the street name, such as an apartment or suite number, is considered "corrupt" and the marker/POI cannot be moved or edited until the address entries are first fixed. Once those edits are approved, you can add info, fix Categories, move the marker, etc. If you try to edit a POI with a bad address, it will error out. It took me a while to figure that out.

So, IMO, if you're willing to do it, we'd all be better off with all of the POIs fixed.  Apartment and suite numbers should be moved to the second address line (ABOVE the street name line in GMM, rather than below), and that's a free-form entry box. Streets should be selected from the pull-down list, and if the existing street name isn't correct (such as Road abbreviated as Rd), it will go to the bottom of the list; you should pick the similar street name from the top of the list that is long-form. The State should also be selected from the pull-down in long-form.

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Geoffrey Perez

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