5 ms·

My shipping address is "Roņu street, Liepāja" and in the other end of our city is "Rožu street, Liepāja" If the address gets somehow mangled, as it often does,

by enkrs 9y ago

My shipping address is "Roņu street, Liepāja" and in the other end of our city is "Rožu street, Liepāja" If the address gets somehow mangled, as it often does, the shipping label could read "Ro?u street" and the postal offices guess on the address being "Roņu" or "Rožu" is as good as anyones. I too usually just write "Ronu street"

coldtea 9y ago
How about adding the zip code for disambiguation? Because even with no characters messed up, many cities have 2 or more streets with the same name.
- jbg_ 9y ago
  Depending on the size of the city, there's a good chance these two differently-named streets are in the same postal code.
- tetraodonpuffer 9y ago
  in many parts of the world zip codes are city-wide (regardless of city size), so that wouldn't help
  - markdown 9y ago
    And some countries don't use zip-codes at all.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      And at least one country (Singapore) has building-level zip codes
      - theBobBob 9y ago
        Ireland goes even further and each apartment in an apartment block would have its own unique code.
- PeterisP 9y ago
  At lest in that particular case, the postal code is the same (LV-3401) for both streets. Coincidentally, at least here, the official addresses are guaranteed to be unique, a city/town can not have two streets with the same name (at least at any single point of time, renaming over centuries gets weird) - naming streets and assigning numbers to houses is not an arbitrary decision that the landowner can make, it is managed/coordinated centrally.
- ACS_Solver 9y ago
  Same code for the two addresses. Liepāja is a major city by local standards but still only has some 80k people and about 15 postal codes cover the entire city. No two streets in the same city are supposed to have the same name per our national rules though.
- afarrell 9y ago
  Something like https://map.what3words.com/broken.rare.share https://map.what3words.com/broken.rare.share might be useful
mjevans 9y ago
I'm more peeved that we can't just use GPS co-ordinates for an address.
- wruza 9y ago
  In addition to an address at most. One missing/misprinted digit and your package is dropped into siberian forest. Sorting is also trouble unless fully automated.
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    If you're printing 14 digits of coordinate it's easy to add two more of checksum.
    - ygra 9y ago
      So what do you do if the checksum doesn't match? Could be off by a meter or half an Earth. So the only recourse is to send it back. Normal addresses are far more resilient. Wrong post code? It'll get re-routed and just takes a few days longer. Wrong house number? In most cases the mailman knows the names in their area and will still deliver it. Typo in the address, name, city? In most cases it still works fine, the example of enkrs notwithstanding. Letters get mangled all the time, and mail still arrives. Also I'm much better remembering addresses of people instead of their GPS coordinates, especially when they're close together, like in a city, where the coordinates would all be almost the same.
      - Dylan16807 9y ago
        I specified adding multiple more so you can use the checksum to repair the number. If they get three or more digits wrong, well, they could have put the wrong city name on there too. In the realm of transcription errors, it's easy to make coordinates work. It's remembering these addresses that causes the real problems.
        eridius 9y ago

by enkrs 9y ago

coldtea 9y ago

How about adding the zip code for disambiguation? Because even with no characters messed up, many cities have 2 or more streets with the same name.

jbg_ 9y ago
Depending on the size of the city, there's a good chance these two differently-named streets are in the same postal code.
tetraodonpuffer 9y ago
in many parts of the world zip codes are city-wide (regardless of city size), so that wouldn't help
- markdown 9y ago
  And some countries don't use zip-codes at all.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    And at least one country (Singapore) has building-level zip codes
    - theBobBob 9y ago
      Ireland goes even further and each apartment in an apartment block would have its own unique code.
PeterisP 9y ago
At lest in that particular case, the postal code is the same (LV-3401) for both streets. Coincidentally, at least here, the official addresses are guaranteed to be unique, a city/town can not have two streets with the same name (at least at any single point of time, renaming over centuries gets weird) - naming streets and assigning numbers to houses is not an arbitrary decision that the landowner can make, it is managed/coordinated centrally.
ACS_Solver 9y ago
Same code for the two addresses. Liepāja is a major city by local standards but still only has some 80k people and about 15 postal codes cover the entire city. No two streets in the same city are supposed to have the same name per our national rules though.
afarrell 9y ago
Something like https://map.what3words.com/broken.rare.share https://map.what3words.com/broken.rare.share might be useful

mjevans 9y ago

I'm more peeved that we can't just use GPS co-ordinates for an address.

wruza 9y ago
In addition to an address at most. One missing/misprinted digit and your package is dropped into siberian forest. Sorting is also trouble unless fully automated.
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  If you're printing 14 digits of coordinate it's easy to add two more of checksum.
  - ygra 9y ago
    So what do you do if the checksum doesn't match? Could be off by a meter or half an Earth. So the only recourse is to send it back. Normal addresses are far more resilient. Wrong post code? It'll get re-routed and just takes a few days longer. Wrong house number? In most cases the mailman knows the names in their area and will still deliver it. Typo in the address, name, city? In most cases it still works fine, the example of enkrs notwithstanding. Letters get mangled all the time, and mail still arrives. Also I'm much better remembering addresses of people instead of their GPS coordinates, especially when they're close together, like in a city, where the coordinates would all be almost the same.
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      I specified adding multiple more so you can use the checksum to repair the number. If they get three or more digits wrong, well, they could have put the wrong city name on there too. In the realm of transcription errors, it's easy to make coordinates work. It's remembering these addresses that causes the real problems.
      - eridius 9y ago