3 ms·

Is it really "geocoding" what they provide and is the 3 words code an "address equivalent"? Wikipedia says geocoding is: the process of taking a text-based de

Is it really "geocoding" what they provide and is the 3 words code an "address equivalent"? Wikipedia says geocoding is: the process of taking a text-based description of a location, such as an address or the name of a place, and returning geographic coordinates, frequently latitude/longitude pair, to identify a location on the Earth's surface. In my opinion the 3 words are already geographic codes and not something like an address. It sounds like nit-pick but it shows the big problem of how they advertise that their service is a solution to vagueness of an address. Because if you have a phone with GPS available (or a similar device) you don't need "geocoding" because you already have the precise latitude/longitude pair. And if you do not have a device with GPS you'll also have a problem getting the 3 words.

Waterluvian 3y ago
Studied GIS for 8 years in university and I still cannot understand the use case for W3W. It removes information with little benefit. If you have a position using a CRS you’ve got lots of information about where it is relative to other positions in the same CRS. If you have a street address, you have hierarchical information of that location, and yea you can geocode it if you want to exchange topology for position. If you have a W3W you’ve got a memorable hash that tells you nothing at all until you geocode it. Making a W3W really feels like the opposite of geocoding. Or consider it like this: A coordinate pair tells you in some unit (degrees, metres, etc) where something is relative to other coordinates (or the datum). An address tells you where things are topologically: “it’s inside this city. Along this street. Beside these other addresses.” (Usually…) What does a W3W tell you? And let me guess… to get any information out of a W3W you must use their proprietary system. If that’s the case, what an absolutely moronic system to use.
- 1970-01-01 3y ago
  >What does a W3W tell you? I'll bite. Using it as intended, both as a service and a physical coordinator (via 3 text chars), reveals a location with 3mx3m bounded precision. No other options exist that provide a solution to "where's the thing" without losing this key precision boundary.
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    It’s a memorable hash, yes. But you can’t reason about anything else using the hash alone, and being slightly off can easily send you to the other side of the planet.
- acc_297 3y ago
  It’s not a perfect system clearly but we used the 3-word code when I worked in forestry because everyone needed to memorize some kind of coordinates for emergencies requiring evacuation from our camp but nobody had a GPS or a map just an old beat up sat phone kept in the glove box The words we had were pretty good ones something like banana-sink-trampoline I don’t remember now but using UTC or lat-long would definitely have been harder to memorize If you get a bad set of three words it’s not so hard to choose a neighbouring set if I remember the grid was pretty fine grained I think our foreman “shopped around” for a nice easy set somewhere on the nearby logging road reasonably close to us
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    Instead of memorizing some set of words, have a proper emergency plan with a named set of locations. Militaries do this all the time. This basically replaces “okay so this is evacuation point Alfa” with “okay so this is evacuation point carrots-bacon-ovens” In either case you still must consult an additional source if you need it translated to a coordinate system. And if you mix up “oven” with “ovens” you might end up evacuating to the other side of the planet.
    - acc_297 3y ago
      the 3 words aren’t for us they are exclusively for the search and rescue team who we talk to when buddy breaks his spine and needs an airlift And you can avoid the ovens vs oven problem by just picking a coordinate with good simple words the helicopter is fine to find you within a few hundred meters of your camp This system has been used extensively in remote resource extraction because humans in the pressure of an emergency can recall words and phrases better than numbers It works pretty well for this use case
- NelsonMinar 3y ago
  W3W's use case is to trick governments into adopting their service, then collect payments forever more on what should be free, non-proprietary addressing infrastructure.

Waterluvian 3y ago

Studied GIS for 8 years in university and I still cannot understand the use case for W3W. It removes information with little benefit. If you have a position using a CRS you’ve got lots of information about where it is relative to other positions in the same CRS. If you have a street address, you have hierarchical information of that location, and yea you can geocode it if you want to exchange topology for position. If you have a W3W you’ve got a memorable hash that tells you nothing at all until you geocode it. Making a W3W really feels like the opposite of geocoding. Or consider it like this: A coordinate pair tells you in some unit (degrees, metres, etc) where something is relative to other coordinates (or the datum). An address tells you where things are topologically: “it’s inside this city. Along this street. Beside these other addresses.” (Usually…) What does a W3W tell you? And let me guess… to get any information out of a W3W you must use their proprietary system. If that’s the case, what an absolutely moronic system to use.

1970-01-01 3y ago
>What does a W3W tell you? I'll bite. Using it as intended, both as a service and a physical coordinator (via 3 text chars), reveals a location with 3mx3m bounded precision. No other options exist that provide a solution to "where's the thing" without losing this key precision boundary.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  It’s a memorable hash, yes. But you can’t reason about anything else using the hash alone, and being slightly off can easily send you to the other side of the planet.
acc_297 3y ago
It’s not a perfect system clearly but we used the 3-word code when I worked in forestry because everyone needed to memorize some kind of coordinates for emergencies requiring evacuation from our camp but nobody had a GPS or a map just an old beat up sat phone kept in the glove box The words we had were pretty good ones something like banana-sink-trampoline I don’t remember now but using UTC or lat-long would definitely have been harder to memorize If you get a bad set of three words it’s not so hard to choose a neighbouring set if I remember the grid was pretty fine grained I think our foreman “shopped around” for a nice easy set somewhere on the nearby logging road reasonably close to us
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  Instead of memorizing some set of words, have a proper emergency plan with a named set of locations. Militaries do this all the time. This basically replaces “okay so this is evacuation point Alfa” with “okay so this is evacuation point carrots-bacon-ovens” In either case you still must consult an additional source if you need it translated to a coordinate system. And if you mix up “oven” with “ovens” you might end up evacuating to the other side of the planet.
  - acc_297 3y ago
    the 3 words aren’t for us they are exclusively for the search and rescue team who we talk to when buddy breaks his spine and needs an airlift And you can avoid the ovens vs oven problem by just picking a coordinate with good simple words the helicopter is fine to find you within a few hundred meters of your camp This system has been used extensively in remote resource extraction because humans in the pressure of an emergency can recall words and phrases better than numbers It works pretty well for this use case
NelsonMinar 3y ago
W3W's use case is to trick governments into adopting their service, then collect payments forever more on what should be free, non-proprietary addressing infrastructure.