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I would say the right thing would be to explicitly return a region rather than default coordinates at all. In the article it claims accuracy to about the ZIP c

I would say the right thing would be to explicitly return a region rather than default coordinates at all. In the article it claims accuracy to about the ZIP code level, but when it's a default for the whole US, it's clearly not. If the uncertainty can vary, you have to explicitly indicate it. If returning an irregularly shaped region is too hard, you can at least return a center and a radius. ...or is that what they were already doing, and the problem comes from people ignoring the radius? In that case, yeah, I guess they were doing what they could, and good on them I guess for moving the center to somewhere that won't cause problems when people ignore the radius. But it doesn't sound like that's what they were doing in the first place?

mikeash 11y ago
I wonder if it would be better for services to express uncertain coordinates as the min and max of latitude and longitude, rather than center and radius. The information conveyed is equivalent, but it would be a (small) barrier against lazy or clueless people ignoring the radius.
ar0 11y ago
According to their API documentation[1] this is what they are doing: There is an "accuracy_radius" element being returned right next to latitude and longitude. And according to the Internet Archive, this element existed already in 2015, so they do not seem to have added it in response to this article. What they did seem to have added in response to this article, however (as it is new), is a more explicit warning for their customers: "Latitude and Longitude are often near the center of population. These values are not precise and should not be used to identify a particular address or household." To be honest, I think it is very hard for an API provider to ensure that their customers will use all the right disclaimers when providing their data onwards to their customers... I think the new approach with pointing the general coordinates into uninhabitated spaces and adding that warning seems probably the best they can do without completely changing their API design (which would make many customers very angry, I would guess). [1] http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoip2/web-services/ http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoip2/web-services/

mikeash 11y ago

I wonder if it would be better for services to express uncertain coordinates as the min and max of latitude and longitude, rather than center and radius. The information conveyed is equivalent, but it would be a (small) barrier against lazy or clueless people ignoring the radius.

ar0 11y ago

According to their API documentation[1] this is what they are doing: There is an "accuracy_radius" element being returned right next to latitude and longitude. And according to the Internet Archive, this element existed already in 2015, so they do not seem to have added it in response to this article. What they did seem to have added in response to this article, however (as it is new), is a more explicit warning for their customers: "Latitude and Longitude are often near the center of population. These values are not precise and should not be used to identify a particular address or household." To be honest, I think it is very hard for an API provider to ensure that their customers will use all the right disclaimers when providing their data onwards to their customers... I think the new approach with pointing the general coordinates into uninhabitated spaces and adding that warning seems probably the best they can do without completely changing their API design (which would make many customers very angry, I would guess). [1] http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoip2/web-services/ http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoip2/web-services/