London Postcodes

[Conrad]

I think anything we do is going to be wrong

Is the new suggestion more right and would it leave everyone happier if not happy ?

[RogerB]

Is the new suggestion more right and would it leave everyone happier if not happy ?

I've had too many beers this week to understand that but it sounds right and I'm happier than the most happy person in a world happy contest.

[oldboots]

I'm not a Londoner but that's not going to stop me putting in my tuppence worth.


It looks to me like the difficulty is caused by the arbitrary link between Post Code and the list of Post Town names. When someone adds a London post code on the "Add Pub" page the Post Town is automatically inserted from a list I guess Conrad or Dave has generated and London is put in the County field. This list of PC/PT is of dubious accuracy to those who know the "villages of London" .

Would it be simpler, or even possible, to unlink Post Code and Post Town and have London as the Post Town, leave the County field blank, and let who ever is adding the pub make their own arbitrary choice of area by putting for example Pimlico or Victoria in the village field?

I had a quick look in an A-Z and counted over 300 different area names in London that I guess would be used by locals, some within a single post code others straddling two or three, so making a list to link all area names in common usage to post codes isn't practical.

[Conrad]

I had begun to wonder something similar myself. I have a few problems with that suggestion though.

I think people in London frequently do use postcode rather than area names, so it is quite useful to have it highly visible at that level if at all possible.

Allowing people to willy nilly add place names I suspect will actually just end up with us having a London page with 300+ different towns in it and become even less usable than it already is (I think)?

People would start migrating the pubs from Greater London to Central London as a more desirable location if we unlinked the postcodes.

I think if we did that it would make it more usable to those who know London, but less usable to those who don't. And I think that is the wrong priority as those who know London are more likely to work out any wrinkles.

All of the above are purely my opinion, so if you think they are wrong do chime in so that I know.

Technical bit (not important): When you add a pub we guess the location based on a partial postcode, something I cobbled together before we got some of our newer tricks. So it back slices the postcode to guess a location, if it finds a pub with the same postcode it chucks itself in that location, if not tries the postcode minus the last character, and so on back until it matches. When I rewrite that bit we will probably still use that trick still but I may also check exactly what county it is in as I can establish that using geo-positioning now.

[Rex_Rattus]

I think anything we do is going to be wrong

Is the new suggestion more right and would it leave everyone happier if not happy ?

If Roger says that SW1H is Westminster then I for one am happy to go along with it.

[Conrad]

I misread his post (too late at night for me). I thought he was saying that his part of SW1H was Westminster, if he is saying SW1H is Westminster then I guess we are headed towards:
Belgravia (SW1W, SW1X)
Pimlico (SW1V)
St James's (SW1Y)
Victoria (SW1E, SW1P)
Westminster (SW1H, W1)
Whitehall (SW1A)

Or just doing away with the postcode constraint which I currently don't favour.

[RogerB]

If Roger says that SW1H is Westminster then I for one am happy to go along with it.

I'm looking out the window at it now! The problem is that St James Park station is 300 yards away one way and Westminster Station 300 yards the other. I can see the top of Westminster Abbey out of one window and St James Park out the other! Take your pick. It really comes down to more of a common sense approach than a geographical one and that can only be done by the people who live and work here with a good knowledge of London's geographical anomolies although I dare say there will still be a few disputes to be had! I think to get central London into manageable areas based on personal preferences will mean a lot of give and take over a period of time but ultimately would be of more use than post codes alone. Personally I have never said I work in SW1, it's always Westminster.

[Rex_Rattus]

I think people in London use postcodes like everyone in the country, and as the address for all pubs ends with the postcode then it is there for anyone who wants to see it. It doesn't need to appear anywhere else in the address as it does now - e.g "Pimlico (SW1)". Or have I misunderstood you?

I'm not sure why allowing people to add places names, and thus inevitably increasing the number of London "places" from those that would arise solely from postcode links, would be seen as a problem. Surely it becomes more usable if the non-London user knows exactly where the pub is? I can't imagine anyone coming up with place names that aren't in the A to Z, and any non-Londoner trying to navigate London without an A to Z is asking for trouble! I don't know how many London place names there are - there could be 300+ for all I know as London is an awfully big place. But does that really matter?

I don't see why anyone would really want to migrate pubs from Greater to Central London. What's in it for them? Firstly, I don't see why you really need this distinction in the first place, but you have it set up that way, so there it is. In Another Place I saw no evidence that anyone was deliberately mis-attributing pub locations - if that is what you are suggesting would happen. If anyone really wanted to do this they could presumably ask for the postcode or map location to be changed.

You have Nick's suggestion regarding SW1 sub-postcodes. If you implement that it would put most SW1 pubs where they belong, and any that fall just over a dividing line - as oldboots has rightly pointed out will happen in some cases - can be corrected when pointed out to you. So, keep the automatic link to postcodes, but be prepared to amend the place name if it is found to be incorrect. This is just my opinion of course - I'm really not being critical.

[NickDavies]

I just went over to the library and scanned in the relevant pages of the postcode atlas. The actual areas in SW1 are as follows, if suitable names can be given to them - it's a bit more confused than I first thought.

SW1A - Whitehall, Parliament then the two parks, Clarence house, St James's and Buckingham Palaces.
SW1E - a small area north of Victoria St and west of Buckingham Gate
SW1H - the area north of Victoria St centred on St James Park station
SW1P - the area south of Victoria St down to the Vauxhall Bridge Road, including Parliament Square, the Westminster Abbey and Cathedral, Millbank and Horseferry Road.
SW1V - the area of Pimlico east of the railway to the Vauxhall bridge road, and including Victoria station.
SW1W - west of the railway to Eaton place, including Sloane Square, Chelsea barracks and Victoria Coach station
SW1X- Belgrave Square, Sloane St and Harrods.
SW1Y - St James's, but not St James's Palace.

I can go through the Ws, ECs, WCs etc if anyone's interested.

[Conrad]

First thing I need to say is that I am willing to change this, but I am keen not to make it any worse, so do keep on feeding back to me even if it does feel like I am not listening.

Ok, inclusion of the postcode in the name is just to show we are grouping them that way which we don't do for the rest of the country, if we don't group them that way the postcode will removed from the name. It also means that if you search for SW1 in our search engine, it will show the area "Pimlico (SW1)" under the area matches. To be fair all of that is minor issues.

The problem I have with just allowing adding of place names is that the site needs to temper usability with being correct, if we are completely correct but the site is unusable to the casual visitor we have shot ourselves in the foot.

Why do I think adding places to the site will make it less usable? Compare Central London to Greater London. Greater London is our worst sinner with 142 "Postal Towns" (a bad name for our London listings, but just to give it the name used elsewhere in the site) I find that page completely unusable personally, whereas Central London has 35 currently, far more manageable chunks. So in our worst case scenario, Central London suddenly multiplies from 35 Postal Towns to 300+ Postal Towns.

Also lets imagine RogerB works in a pub he tells his friend it is in Westminster, but some helpful soul has known better and put it in St James Park, his friend successfully find Westminster in the list of places in Central London but can't find the pub. Admittedly arguably that problem is already there, but I think it is less of a problem than the proposed open it up completely approach.

Moving places is mostly done by accommodation offering venues who hope to tag into a central areas hotel business, probably a red herring for what this conversation is really about so ignore it (although it is a headache for us vetting corrections).

Nick's suggestion is useful and may be better already than what we have, I'll let you all tell me.