IBM Hursley address not loading into platform?

[peterkwells]

Raised on twitter: https://twitter.com/jtonline/status/570867920923975680

From IBM website the address is:

Hursley Park
Winchester
Hants
SO21 2JN

[jt-nti]

The address as I entered it was something like this (from a business card!)...
IBM United Kingdom Limited
Hursley Park
Winchester
Hampshire
SO21 2JN
I searched for Winchester SO21 2JN just now and didn't get any results so I've submitted it again.

[giacecco]

Hi @jthub, that's a splendid tricky address you've found there. Hursley Park's IBM offices are well known to geeks, I believe I've visited them once, too.

A first point that is useful to make is that we prefer companies' names to be left out of addresses unless they are instrumental to make the address unambiguous. A good example is the 3 "British Libraries" you see here. They're all places related to the British Library and hosted by the British Library building, but they are clearly three different "places" you may want to address.

From that consideration, it is likely that we do want "IBM United Kingdom Limited" to be part of the address you started from.

If one submits your address to Sorting Office today, she gets:

SAON:
PAON: IBM United Kingdom Limited
Street:
Locality: Hursley
Town: Winchester
Postcode: SO21 2JN

It looks like we've lost "Hursley Park".

The problem is that Hursley Park is what is commonly called "vernacular": a way used by many people to call some place. The actual address is "Hursley Park Road". You would find that if you dug in our source for road names: OS Locator.

Because at the moment we are not yet geared up to manage addresses that can't be matched against our reference tables, we fail interpreting this vernacular address correctly. We are strict because we want to assure the highest possible degree of confidence in the addresses we are ingesting, but this also means that we may lose a few, as in this case.

We have plans to change that and make the algorithm smarter. For example, we could try attaching a "road", "street" etc. to all building blocks we can't recognise in a given address, and check again vs our reference tables. Why don't you take the task of improving this? Find Sorting Office's source code at https://github.com/OpenAddressesUK/sorting_office. This conversation has also become an item in our roadmap at OpenAddressesUK/roadmap#87 .

[jt-nti]

Ah, now that you mention it I remember you described a similar problem with the Hampshire Council address where ODCamp was:

Hampshire County Council
The Castle
Winchester
Hampshire
SO23 8UJ

"Hursley Park" and "The Castle" seem like they're more than simply vernacular usage of a street. There is a "Hursley Park" Road (which is on "Hursley Park") but saying that the actual address is "Hursley Park Road" doesn't seem quite right. Similarly, there is a "Castle Avenue", but no "The Castle Avenue", and the building wasn't on "Castle Avenue".

Perhaps this type of address has no street but should include a premises?

[jt-nti]

Ooo, another example would be...

The Mansion
Bletchley Park
Milton Keynes
MK3 6EB

...and I don't think there's a Bletchley Park Road/Street/Close/Mews/Avenue/... for that one. If it had to have a street, I guess you could include Sherwood Drive, but that doesn't seem necessary or obvious. (OK, I should really cut down on my park life...)