Been with you on this since you first suggested it. For those of us who are also trying to take care of non-English named areas it can be a real headache to hold up the current policy.

I think that if this would be implemented it would save a lot of work for people correcting problems and provide for a more streamlined site.

It might also give users a chance to personalize their interface a little (with choices such as “view places in [English]” / “view local names”) which again would increase popularity – since users love personalization :)

Places which have but one name, or don’t have a translation into your chosen language could also be marked with a star.

Each name could be added similarly to when one adds an attachment to an email, with a small box to the side from which you could choose what language to mark it as. A small field below the names could allow you to choose which name could be considered the original.

For the more problematic places one could just choose [ English (default) ].

Now that there are even 43places in other languages than English I think this is really becoming quite pressing..

Respond | Cheer this | 10 months ago (Nov 19, 04:38AM)

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.)

Respond | 1 cheer | Cheer this | about 1 year ago (Sep 18, 01:45PM)