10 ms·

The word list already is 40k long. That's beyond most people's vocab and includes really awkward to spell words. IMO, if the solution is to use words, then Wha

The word list already is 40k long. That's beyond most people's vocab and includes really awkward to spell words. IMO, if the solution is to use words, then What4Words would have had a word list of less than 3000, resulting in a word list with less confusable words and more accessible to children and people who struggle to read or write.

kybernetikos 5y ago
I did one of these for fun at the beginning of the year, and ended up needing to spend way more time on the wordlist than I'd expected. In the end I felt that a list of 4096 words was a decent compromise between accuracy and is still fairly managable for trying to remove words that are too easy to mistake for each other. It lets you do everywhere on earth to slightly more accuracy than what3words in 4 words. Something that what3words does is not have an obvious hierarchy of words (e.g. where the first one covers a larger area, and subsequent words home in). I didn't like that, but I understand why they do it - if a single word is going to cover a large area, you have to be extra careful that you don't choose something offensive for a particular region. By having no obvious structure, they get away with being less careful on the wordlist.
- eterm 5y ago
  The issue of hierarchy is that it's orthogonal to having very different results for nearby areas. With a hierarchy you immediately run into, "Am I in gibbons.apple.banana or was it gibbons.apple.bandana" which is just down the road. Without hierarchy it jumps out that one of those results is improbable if tallied with any knowledge of roughly where the person is.
  - kybernetikos 5y ago
    As you say, the issues are orthogonal. I randomise my wordlist so places next to each other don't have words necessarily close to each other in the alphabet. But because it's hierarchical e.g. most places in the uk start 'bishop'. I think this is good because you learn to recognise places,but imagine if loads of places in India started with the word 'colony'... it's a problem you don't have to worry about if you don't use a hierarchical scheme. https://wherewords.id/ https://wherewords.id/
pmoriarty 5y ago
Spelling is the Achilles' heel of all word-based systems. People who have trouble with spelling (such as non-native speakers of whatever language the words come from or children) may not be able to rely on word-based systems. Word-based systems are also going to be hampered by speakers of different accents. Letter- and number-based systems are probably always going to be much more robust, especially when used with a standard phonetic alphabet[1]. There could even be a checksum letter/number to make the system even more robust. Unfortunately, such systems will never be as memorable or as easy to say as a few words (spelling issues aside). [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet
- flir 5y ago
  > Spelling is the Achilles' heel of all word-based systems. Stick with nouns? Then you can use icons as supplements. Ball, Pen, Light bulb, Burger, Guitar. Possibly easier to translate between languages, too.
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    How do you spell "guitar"? It's not spelled like it sounds, and not every English speaker (never mind people who can't speak English) is going to know how to spell it. Some may try to spell it "gitar", "geetar" or even "getar", for example. While these maybe be "obviously" wrong spelling for skilled spellers, they're not so for everyone. Even with a simple word like "ball", it's not obvious that it should have two l's at the end. Someone might spell it "bal" when they hear it. Spelling reform[1] movements have pointed out these and many other issues with English spelling, but unfortunately the alternatives they've come up with are just not widely known, and at least some of them still have their own problems (such as lack of standardization due to different phonemic spellings for words spoken by people with different accents). Even were there some magical alternate spelling system for English that was widely known among English speakers, it would still be a stumbling block for people who don't know English, as would the words of any other language.. as long as there are people who don't speak that language. So any word-based system is going to be problematic and error-prone for some people. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_reform
ehsankia 5y ago
> The word list already is 40k long To be fair, if the lookup table is created properly, the majority of habited locations should be within the first two bands, which means you're really only using 2500, or 5000 of those words. That was the whole point of the banding system, I assume.
- cybergibbons 5y ago
  It's promoted for use in search and rescue, so other bands are in use.
  - mike_d 5y ago
    I used to do SAR. Lost persons do a terrible job of communicating because they are afraid and often emotionally and physically drained. But if you have them on a radio or a cell phone, you can generally locate them without the persons direct assistance. One of the many things that really annoys me about W3W is that it sucks for actual navigation. If I am at waffle.tire.sigh is that north or south of keys.sad.tree? Am I heading in the right direction?
    - cybergibbons 5y ago
      Yeah, multiple MRT members have contacted me to say this is a real struggle. If someone is on the move, it's virtually impossible to work out what direction they are going.
noir_lord 5y ago
Funnily enough I did that math the other day when this kicked off. It comes out to 4th root of ((510.1 trillion)/9) which is ~2743.8 Where it gets interesting is that it's only ~4752 for 1mx1m cells :) Another use for `Correct Horse Battery Staple` I guess.
jhgb 5y ago
I wonder where "correct horse battery staple" would be located...
- SamBam 5y ago
  Looking at the 3 word-based W3W, for some reason they have "horses" and not "horse," but you can find both https://what3words.com/correct.horses.battery https://what3words.com/correct.horses.battery and https://what3words.com/horses.battery.staple https://what3words.com/horses.battery.staple, and interestingly enough they are both in Canada, one in Nunavut and the other in Quebec.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    "...if the solution is to use words, then What4Words would have had a word list of less than 3000, resulting in a word list with less confusable words..."
    - SamBam 5y ago
      I had ninja-edited to be clearer, but perhaps I was too slow. I was simply noting what the equivalent two locations would be in W3W.
clubs-above 5y ago
Even 2500 words is enough to get some unfortunate combinations https://treasures-perspective.github.io/smut3words/ https://treasures-perspective.github.io/smut3words/
jfrunyon 5y ago
Bingo. Either more words, or fewer grid squares (f.e. instead of 3x3m grid, a 4x4m grid). I truly don't understand why they thought they needed 3m (10ft) of precision: my home has something like 10 What3Words addresses (80 if you count the yard and the other side of the duplex!). The old outhouse at the family ranch has more than one! IMO, they also should have built redundancy (some form of error checking at least) into the encoding.

kybernetikos 5y ago

I did one of these for fun at the beginning of the year, and ended up needing to spend way more time on the wordlist than I'd expected. In the end I felt that a list of 4096 words was a decent compromise between accuracy and is still fairly managable for trying to remove words that are too easy to mistake for each other. It lets you do everywhere on earth to slightly more accuracy than what3words in 4 words. Something that what3words does is not have an obvious hierarchy of words (e.g. where the first one covers a larger area, and subsequent words home in). I didn't like that, but I understand why they do it - if a single word is going to cover a large area, you have to be extra careful that you don't choose something offensive for a particular region. By having no obvious structure, they get away with being less careful on the wordlist.

eterm 5y ago
The issue of hierarchy is that it's orthogonal to having very different results for nearby areas. With a hierarchy you immediately run into, "Am I in gibbons.apple.banana or was it gibbons.apple.bandana" which is just down the road. Without hierarchy it jumps out that one of those results is improbable if tallied with any knowledge of roughly where the person is.
- kybernetikos 5y ago
  As you say, the issues are orthogonal. I randomise my wordlist so places next to each other don't have words necessarily close to each other in the alphabet. But because it's hierarchical e.g. most places in the uk start 'bishop'. I think this is good because you learn to recognise places,but imagine if loads of places in India started with the word 'colony'... it's a problem you don't have to worry about if you don't use a hierarchical scheme. https://wherewords.id/ https://wherewords.id/

pmoriarty 5y ago

Spelling is the Achilles' heel of all word-based systems. People who have trouble with spelling (such as non-native speakers of whatever language the words come from or children) may not be able to rely on word-based systems. Word-based systems are also going to be hampered by speakers of different accents. Letter- and number-based systems are probably always going to be much more robust, especially when used with a standard phonetic alphabet[1]. There could even be a checksum letter/number to make the system even more robust. Unfortunately, such systems will never be as memorable or as easy to say as a few words (spelling issues aside). [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet

flir 5y ago
> Spelling is the Achilles' heel of all word-based systems. Stick with nouns? Then you can use icons as supplements. Ball, Pen, Light bulb, Burger, Guitar. Possibly easier to translate between languages, too.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  How do you spell "guitar"? It's not spelled like it sounds, and not every English speaker (never mind people who can't speak English) is going to know how to spell it. Some may try to spell it "gitar", "geetar" or even "getar", for example. While these maybe be "obviously" wrong spelling for skilled spellers, they're not so for everyone. Even with a simple word like "ball", it's not obvious that it should have two l's at the end. Someone might spell it "bal" when they hear it. Spelling reform[1] movements have pointed out these and many other issues with English spelling, but unfortunately the alternatives they've come up with are just not widely known, and at least some of them still have their own problems (such as lack of standardization due to different phonemic spellings for words spoken by people with different accents). Even were there some magical alternate spelling system for English that was widely known among English speakers, it would still be a stumbling block for people who don't know English, as would the words of any other language.. as long as there are people who don't speak that language. So any word-based system is going to be problematic and error-prone for some people. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_reform

ehsankia 5y ago

> The word list already is 40k long To be fair, if the lookup table is created properly, the majority of habited locations should be within the first two bands, which means you're really only using 2500, or 5000 of those words. That was the whole point of the banding system, I assume.

cybergibbons 5y ago
It's promoted for use in search and rescue, so other bands are in use.
- mike_d 5y ago
  I used to do SAR. Lost persons do a terrible job of communicating because they are afraid and often emotionally and physically drained. But if you have them on a radio or a cell phone, you can generally locate them without the persons direct assistance. One of the many things that really annoys me about W3W is that it sucks for actual navigation. If I am at waffle.tire.sigh is that north or south of keys.sad.tree? Am I heading in the right direction?
  - cybergibbons 5y ago
    Yeah, multiple MRT members have contacted me to say this is a real struggle. If someone is on the move, it's virtually impossible to work out what direction they are going.

noir_lord 5y ago

Funnily enough I did that math the other day when this kicked off. It comes out to 4th root of ((510.1 trillion)/9) which is ~2743.8 Where it gets interesting is that it's only ~4752 for 1mx1m cells :) Another use for `Correct Horse Battery Staple` I guess.

jhgb 5y ago

I wonder where "correct horse battery staple" would be located...

SamBam 5y ago
Looking at the 3 word-based W3W, for some reason they have "horses" and not "horse," but you can find both https://what3words.com/correct.horses.battery https://what3words.com/correct.horses.battery and https://what3words.com/horses.battery.staple https://what3words.com/horses.battery.staple, and interestingly enough they are both in Canada, one in Nunavut and the other in Quebec.
- jhgb 5y ago
  "...if the solution is to use words, then What4Words would have had a word list of less than 3000, resulting in a word list with less confusable words..."
  - SamBam 5y ago
    I had ninja-edited to be clearer, but perhaps I was too slow. I was simply noting what the equivalent two locations would be in W3W.

clubs-above 5y ago

Even 2500 words is enough to get some unfortunate combinations https://treasures-perspective.github.io/smut3words/ https://treasures-perspective.github.io/smut3words/

jfrunyon 5y ago

Bingo. Either more words, or fewer grid squares (f.e. instead of 3x3m grid, a 4x4m grid). I truly don't understand why they thought they needed 3m (10ft) of precision: my home has something like 10 What3Words addresses (80 if you count the yard and the other side of the duplex!). The old outhouse at the family ranch has more than one! IMO, they also should have built redundancy (some form of error checking at least) into the encoding.