EuroBillTracker

From what I've gathered during reading the rest of the posts, it seems completely clear to me that I have understood correctly and bhoeyb has understood wrong.
Another possibility would have been, that Mr Euro would have interpreted the word "parish" to mean something else than a district of a city, such as Charlottenburg, Punavuori, Regola or Westerpark (in Amsterdam).
In this case it is, however, clear that the word "parish" is used meaning a part of a city governed by the governing body of the said city. I also consider it clear that Mr Euro has understood this and is truly meaning that direct parts of a city should not be merged into the profiles of the corresponding cities.

So, my understanding is, that with only a handful exceptions the EBT userbase disagrees with Mr Euro. Without having asked them directly, I understand that Avij, Nerzhul and Giro would disagree with the point Mr Euro is running (assuming that I have understood his point correctly).

It appears to me that Mr Euro is basing his advice on his own ideas that are not supported by the rest of the EBT administration. If this is truly the case, then he is stopping the legitime thing from happening by not accepting a part of a city to be merged into what it is an administrative part of.

I think the city profile of Bruxelles needs to be split

there are the city profiles of the neighbouring municipalities of Bruxelles that all form the Bruxelles capital region, which is often called Bruxelles but is not a municipality, for example 1060 Saint-Gilles and 1210 Saint-Josse-ten-Noode

I don't think many Belgian want to have these profiles merged to one big Bruxelles

but people enter notes in "1060 Bruxelles", which is merged with the Bruxelles profile but should be moved to Saint-Gilles

At the moment, Bruxelles is by far the city with the most users in Belgium, while it has only 31% of the inhabitants of the biggest city in Belgium, Antwerpen. I think this is because people who enter "1060 Bruxelles" are counted to the Bruxelles profile instead of the Saint-Gilles profile

what do the Belgian users think of this?

Dakkus wrote:From what I've gathered during reading the rest of the posts, it seems completely clear to me that I have understood correctly and bhoeyb has understood wrong.
Another possibility would have been, that Mr Euro would have interpreted the word "parish" to mean something else than a district of a city, such as Charlottenburg, Punavuori, Regola or Westerpark (in Amsterdam).
In this case it is, however, clear that the word "parish" is used meaning a part of a city governed by the governing body of the said city. I also consider it clear that Mr Euro has understood this and is truly meaning that direct parts of a city should not be merged into the profiles of the corresponding cities.

So, my understanding is, that with only a handful exceptions the EBT userbase disagrees with Mr Euro. Without having asked them directly, I understand that Avij, Nerzhul and Giro would disagree with the point Mr Euro is running (assuming that I have understood his point correctly).

It appears to me that Mr Euro is basing his advice on his own ideas that are not supported by the rest of the EBT administration. If this is truly the case, then he is stopping the legitime thing from happening by not accepting a part of a city to be merged into what it is an administrative part of.

First of all, I don't like it when people try to think for me, when I am part of the discussion. Second, you are assuming others opinion about the topic, which you are not sure about. Third and certainly the point which makes me angry, is you are trying to exclude me out of the discussion and setting me against the webmasters as if I am some sort of rebel.

Now for the discussion sake: Bhoeyb was right what I was thinking. "Tiergarten" is merely a "location" within the city like Central Park is in New York. I was not referring to that.

Knospe gave a good example with "Brugge". Zeebrugge is part of the municipality Brugge, but is considered by every Belgian as a city on its own. Often in Belgian the "subcities" have their own identity. When those inhabitants are speaking about their city, in most cases they are referring as "I am from Zeebrugge". Even in dense cities like Antwerp and Brussels, they most of the time are talking about their subcity. Only when they are travelling outside of Belgium. They talk about Brugge, Antwerp of Brussels. And most of the time it will be something like. I live half hour drive from Brussels or something like that. I always am referring to my city Hasselt on my worldtravels as follows: I live one hour drive from Brussels in a place called Hasselt.

androl wrote:I think the city profile of Bruxelles needs to be split

there are the city profiles of the neighbouring municipalities of Bruxelles that all form the Bruxelles capital region, which is often called Bruxelles but is not a municipality, for example 1060 Saint-Gilles and 1210 Saint-Josse-ten-Noode

I don't think many Belgian want to have these profiles merged to one big Bruxelles

but people enter notes in "1060 Bruxelles", which is merged with the Bruxelles profile but should be moved to Saint-Gilles

At the moment, Bruxelles is by far the city with the most users in Belgium, while it has only 31% of the inhabitants of the biggest city in Belgium, Antwerpen. I think this is because people who enter "1060 Bruxelles" are counted to the Bruxelles profile instead of the Saint-Gilles profile

what do the Belgian users think of this?

It's always nice when foreign people try to understand the specific Belgian situation of Brussels. If I remember correctly, we already had a discussion about the Brussels problem, but we never came to a conclusion. Maybe a few of us should organise a chatsession about the Brussels situation and clean the mess up. The Brussels situation is very difficult for several reasons:
* Political: Brussels is a city as well as a regional state
* The subcities (pe Etterbeek, Laken,...) within Brussels are often not that clearly marked.

The only long-term solution to all these merge, split, spindle and fold problems with locations, cities, municipalities and so on would probably a real hierarchical location database - we do have one now, but with very little hierarchy (a location now belongs to a city profile which belongs to a country). In this fictional database, every entry would belong to a location to cover spelling and language variants, each location would then be part of a municipality (or whatever is the smallest sensible administrative unit), which will in turn be part of a district, province, region or whatever, which will then be part of a country. Provinces, regions, districts and the like will have to form country-specific hierarchies. All in all a lot of work - this new design will take quite a bit of thought (there's bound to be quite a few special cases), and if it's even easily possible to then convert the existing database design to the new one, all existing locations will have to be checked whether they're correctly assigned, and if not, well - we're still working on outliers from the last design change.

Benefits would include clear rules for assigning new locations, statistics for administrative entities between location and country-level, and maybe even the possibility of sensible locations-checking while entering (though that probably would eat too much server-time).

Sounds like a point of discussion for an ES-EBT working group in fact.

Gauss wrote:P.S.: As I said you can also use this topic to report missing dots.

Here are two dots that are currently missing:

• Uskovnica: 46.320577 N, 13.909501 E
  Snovik: 46.233031 N, 14.709969 E

@klapotec

If I understand well you'd like to manage lcations database as it done actually with German ones with villages belongings their municipalities.

Sounds a nice solution but what a big work to do...

If this will be the scenario, imho we'd need at least a coords volunteer for each euro country who, of course, knows better as a foreign one how
regions/provinces/districts and so on are organized

ravestorm wrote:@klapotec

If I understand well you'd like to manage lcations database as it done actually with German ones with villages belongings their municipalities.

And Austrian ones too, at least I'm working on it.

ravestorm wrote:Sounds a nice solution but what a big work to do...

Yes.

ravestorm wrote:If this will be the scenario, imho we'd need at least a coords volunteer for each euro country who, of course, knows better as a foreign one how regions/provinces/districts and so on are organized

Maybe not for each country - some may be similar enough, others may have easily accessible and good online documentation (the Austrian post office website is quite useful in that regard, showing the Gemeinde, Bezirk and Bundesland each location belongs to). But we'd certainly need more volunteers than now.

EDIT: A good guide for EU nations would be the NUTS system. Now where to find data for not only NUTS levels 1, 2 and 3, but also LAU levels 1 and 2 (previously NUTS 4 and 5)?

EDIT2: After following lots of links, I think that the NUTS system can be used only as a rough guide - it's based on population, so there are hierarchical levels that don't make sense for some countries, while some actual administrative/political levels that do exist and make sense don't get mapped into NUTS:
In Austria NUTS level 1 is groups of Bundesländer, level 2 is Bundesländer, level 3 is mostly groups of Bezirke, LAU level 1 doesn't get mapped at all, level 2 is Gemeinden. A more useful hierarchy for EBT would be: Bundesländer, Bezirke and Gemeinden.
In Germany, we have a better fit: NUTS level 1 is Bundesländer, level 2 are Regierungsbezirke (where they exist), level 3 are the Landkreise, LAU level 1 are Verwaltungsgemeinschaften (Samtgemeinden and the like), and level 2 the Gemeinden.

I like klapo's suggestion. I would volounteer for the German part...

Mr Euro wrote:

Dakkus wrote:From what I've gathered during reading the rest of the posts, it seems completely clear to me that I have understood correctly and bhoeyb has understood wrong.
Another possibility would have been, that Mr Euro would have interpreted the word "parish" to mean something else than a district of a city, such as Charlottenburg, Punavuori, Regola or Westerpark (in Amsterdam).
In this case it is, however, clear that the word "parish" is used meaning a part of a city governed by the governing body of the said city. I also consider it clear that Mr Euro has understood this and is truly meaning that direct parts of a city should not be merged into the profiles of the corresponding cities.

So, my understanding is, that with only a handful exceptions the EBT userbase disagrees with Mr Euro. Without having asked them directly, I understand that Avij, Nerzhul and Giro would disagree with the point Mr Euro is running (assuming that I have understood his point correctly).

It appears to me that Mr Euro is basing his advice on his own ideas that are not supported by the rest of the EBT administration. If this is truly the case, then he is stopping the legitime thing from happening by not accepting a part of a city to be merged into what it is an administrative part of.

First of all, I don't like it when people try to think for me, when I am part of the discussion. Second, you are assuming others opinion about the topic, which you are not sure about. Third and certainly the point which makes me angry, is you are trying to exclude me out of the discussion and setting me against the webmasters as if I am some sort of rebel.

Now for the discussion sake: Bhoeyb was right what I was thinking. "Tiergarten" is merely a "location" within the city like Central Park is in New York. I was not referring to that.

Knospe gave a good example with "Brugge". Zeebrugge is part of the municipality Brugge, but is considered by every Belgian as a city on its own. Often in Belgian the "subcities" have their own identity. When those inhabitants are speaking about their city, in most cases they are referring as "I am from Zeebrugge". Even in dense cities like Antwerp and Brussels, they most of the time are talking about their subcity. Only when they are travelling outside of Belgium. They talk about Brugge, Antwerp of Brussels. And most of the time it will be something like. I live half hour drive from Brussels or something like that. I always am referring to my city Hasselt on my worldtravels as follows: I live one hour drive from Brussels in a place called Hasselt.

I am not trying to think for you. I am trying to understand what you are saying. I am very surprised if I am really not supposed to try to understand what people are saying when they are writing on the forum. This is no "Silly Game", you know. The words should be more than bunches of letters.
If I had been trying to think for you, I would not have asked for your confirmation for whether I am right or wrong.
And I would like to know how the district of Tiergarten is supposed to differ from the districts in Lisboa. Yes, Tiergarten is not a Bezirk but instead a part of another Bezirk (Moabite?). There are thousands of people living in the district, so it most clearly is more than just a park.
Tiergarten, being a district of Berlin, is indeed just a location in the city. Just like Belem is just a location in the city of Lisboa. Which happens to be just my point.

I know how Brussels works and I have an idea of how Belgian cities work, as well. That is also the precise reason why I took no Belgian cities as examples, as they are a case of their own and Belgian cities can't be used as a base for a wider standard.

So, in my eyes Mr Euro is not some kinda anarchist who is trying to go against the will of others. I see him more so that he's been communicating mainly with other Belgians, who might then share his opinion, but has not been communicating with non-belgians about this subject.
However, for me (and for my knowledge, almost the whole non-Belgian EBTF userbase) the whole concept of entering notes according to district names is just outright wrong. If it's about a separate village, then ok. For example the city of Nurmijärvi consists of several smaller areas, which have more than 10km of fields in between. It is then very acceptable entering notes with the place name "Klaukkala", albeit the actual city is Nurmijärvi. And even then the Klaukkala notes have always been merged into Nurmijärvi's entry.
However, when it's about a city district that is a direct part of the urban area of the said city, entering according to district names is seen as outright wrong.
I find Mr Euro's idea acceptable for the Belgian situation, but extending his view in this case outside Belgium is a mistake caused by lack of knowledge of how things are seen elsewhere. In other words, a very human thing to do. I don't think Mr Euro's trying to be evil, I am just pointing out that his words are differing from the thoughts of a vast majority.

But let me now rephrase my question, this time using a district that is also a Bezirk. So.. If somebody entered banknotes from the Bezirk of Lichtenberg, which is a part of the city of Berlin, using "Lichtenberg" as a city name instead of "Berlin", would you refuse the proposal to merge Lichtenberg's notes under Berlin's entry?
If not, then what is the difference between the Lisboa case and the Berlin case?

My 2 €-cents

Dakkus wrote:Tiergarten, being a district of Berlin, is indeed just a location in the city. Just like Belem is just a location in the city of Lisboa. Which happens to be just my point.

I know how Brussels works and I have an idea of how Belgian cities work, as well. That is also the precise reason why I took no Belgian cities as examples, as they are a case of their own and Belgian cities can't be used as a base for a wider standard.

However, for me (and for my knowledge, almost the whole non-Belgian EBTF userbase) the whole concept of entering notes according to district names is just outright wrong. If it's about a separate village, then ok. For example the city of Nurmijärvi consists of several smaller areas, which have more than 10km of fields in between. It is then very acceptable entering notes with the place name "Klaukkala", albeit the actual city is Nurmijärvi. And even then the Klaukkala notes have always been merged into Nurmijärvi's entry.
I find Mr Euro's idea acceptable for the Belgian situation, but extending his view in this case outside Belgium is a mistake caused by lack of knowledge of how things are seen elsewhere. In other words, a very human thing to do. I don't think Mr Euro's trying to be evil, I am just pointing out that his words are differing from the thoughts of a vast majority.

But let me now rephrase my question, this time using a district that is also a Bezirk. So.. If somebody entered banknotes from the Bezirk of Lichtenberg, which is a part of the city of Berlin, using "Lichtenberg" as a city name instead of "Berlin", would you refuse the proposal to merge Lichtenberg's notes under Berlin's entry?
If not, then what is the difference between the Lisboa case and the Berlin case?

It has been said before, each country has its own specific characteristics. A very general rule would be hard to set. Having said that, I believe the wording "city" is unfortunate, maybe not the best choice.
Not claiming to understand every specific country in Europe, I believe most of them have a working postal system (even in Portugal, albeit our challenge in rulling ourselves, knoles).
A better choice for me would be to set the rule to "postal code descriptor", as when you would write a letter to that address, allowing exceptions for when the locations are small villages, but clearly detattched locations like in the finnish example above.
EBT could still rewire all postal codes refering to the same city and merge them properly, as it is being done.

In particular, for the portuguese case, we have evolved to a 7 digit postal code (4+3) to speed up deliveries, and often the 7-digit code refers to a single street (where my parents live the street has less than 20 houses and an exclusive 7 digit postal code for that street), sometimes, the same street has more than 1 different postal code. There must be some merging done, you can not expect every street inside a city being a different location.

The postal system has worked that one out already, no need to reinvent the wheel really, for example Lisbon have hundreds of different 7 digit postal codes each, all of them reporting to the same city. (The same with Porto or Braga). Smaller locations near the cities have different "postal code descriptors". So in the portuguese case, the "postal code descriptor" is more in-line with the concept I interpret Mr. Euro means by a "different postal code".

Still, for smaller villages it sometimes happens that 2 or 3 small villages that can be quilometers apart share the same 7digit postal code, so exceptions must be allowed for such a rule. (like the "town-shield" rule).

Coming back to Lisbon, all of the examples given clearly are the same as Lisbon. To accept Benfica or Belém as different "cities" or independent entries, would mean that Lisbon does not exist. Every part of Lisbon has a different name. Nobody who lives in Benfica would say "I woke up and went to Lisbon this morning". When they wake up they are in Lisbon.

People who live in the suburbs, go to Lisbon in the morning, from places like Cacém, Amadora or Oeiras. But they go to Lisbon, not to Belém, or to Benfica. When you say Belém, people know you mean the part of the city near the river, where the monuments are. It is fine to have them as sub-cities, merged into the same city, but as Lisbon-Lisboa-Lissabon refer to the same place, so do Belém and Benfica, Chiado, Alcantara, etc. Very similar to the Bezirks in Wien. Again, in the portuguese case at least, the Postal system has solved this problem already, no need to reinvent the wheel really.

My 2 €-cents.

No Dakkus, it's more like Moabit is a part of the city district (aka borough) Tiergarten which was named after the adjacent huge park that was left empty when the city expanded westward beyond the Brandenburg Gate. It's one of the few boroughs in Berlin that is not named after a formerly independent settlement integrated into Berlin, most probably because it was more or less empty grassland before. The word parish is definitely not the right term to describe all the boroughs mentioned in the last posts (including the three from Lissabon who were still unmerged a few hours ago btw... )

I actually kind of even agree with bhoeyb, it is somehwat pointless to merge everything just because they declared to become an administrative community at some point. I have entered two notes in such a monster profile (of course I have not entered them as Löwenberger Land, and also not as Löwenberger Land-Löwenberg):D. That's a municipality consisting of 15 places, covering roughly almost a fifth (245 km²) of the territory of Landkreis Oberhavel (1796km²) . And, most importantly, no-one cosiders himself being in Löwenberger Land when being or living in any of the 15 places. And nobody ever will.

Klapotec's idea seems to be very ambitious (and, some could say, a bit oversized as it would imho mean building up a detailed location register of Europe, which is in fact not necessary to track notes and one could also wonder if we had no more superincumbent problems on this site ) but when I think of the possibilities of regionalized statistics I think it might be worth it. Stuff like that is appealing to "less intensive users" and newcomers, too. (at least it was for me)

And why shouldn't it be feasible? Just gather enough motivated volunteers, get together to agree on how you will do it (here it will be important not to feel insulted when someone disagrees with another someone), present your idea to the BoD or whoever and then get going. I mean, that's what this association should be about, right?

(last paragraph might contain traces of Utopionium)

Oh my god. What have I done?

Mr Euro wrote:The Brussels situation is very difficult for several reasons:
* Political: Brussels is a city as well as a regional state
* The subcities (pe Etterbeek, Laken,...) within Brussels are often not that clearly marked.

1) that should not be the point, as we have city profiles and not state profiles. if I see right, the point is that the whole thing is called a "city" by many people, while it consists of many political units, themselves "cities"
2) really? when I was in "Greater Brussels", I saw these street signs everywhere where the name of the political city is written on it. And if people know the correct postal code, they know the city, because if I am right, postal codes and cities are matching very well
I don't want to make a decision on this, I leave it to you Belgians, because it's "your-damn-country", I just find it strange that 2 notes from the same place count for 2 different profiles

Please reunite these two profiles:

wrong one, right one