The current state of affairs with place names on 43 Places goes something like this:
Large areas (e.g. countries) are named with their English names, and other languages are relegated to the AKA names.
Small areas (e.g. cities) are named according to the local language, and the English names are relegated to the AKAs.
This causes confusion with English speakers (the majority of 43 Places users?) who are inattentive when searching for a city. They enter a name like “Moscow,” and when the results fail to show “Moscow” in the biggest, boldest type, they assume they must add a new place.
I realize there is a tradeoff here between ease of implementation and meeting users’ expectations. But when it causes repeated confusion and the attendant clean-up work, I think it is time to rethink the feature and find a better way.
My idea: instead of one “primary” name and one “AKA” name for each place, allow one or more names for each place. Each name would actually be a composite type: a string, a Boolean for “official” vs. “AKA,” and a language identifier. When a user searches for a place, names in that user’s language would be given highest prominence in results.
(Yes, that’s complicated, but it’s just one idea. Surely there are other solutions that would be simpler than this but not overly simple as it is now.)
