National Postcodes to be introduced

MBSnr

oscarBravo wrote: »

"Worse than useless" implies that it's actively harmful in some way; that the job of the emergency services has been made more difficult by Eircodes. Given that he doesn't explain how this is the case, I think it's fair to say that he's suffering from the same reflexive criticism problem that we've seen all too much of in this thread.

True. I do think though that the lack of Eircode on Google maps over 4 months since launch is a concern. Especially since a recent update, Google maps can now do drive turn by turn navigation 'offline'. I wonder where the delay is .... Google or the Eircode provider...?

Sam Russell

Eircode is a system of PPS numbers for addresses, and any random set of characters would have done as well. Anyone could have designed such a system.

The comment that 'it is worse than useless' could relate to the emergency services having to explain to callers and others that the Eircode is not used by them because they have yet to incorporate it into their specialised terminals and that no satnav equipment uses it yet. That explaination takes time that could be better spent dealing with the emergency.

swampgas

Sam Russell wrote: »

Eircode is a system of PPS numbers for addresses, and any random set of characters would have done as well. Anyone could have designed such a system.

The comment that 'it is worse than useless' could relate to the emergency services having to explain to callers and others that the Eircode is not used by them because they have yet to incorporate it into their specialised terminals and that no satnav equipment uses it yet. That explaination takes time that could be better spent dealing with the emergency.

If I were managing the emergency services my priority would be finding ways to take advantage of eircodes where they are available. Simple ad hoc procedures can be introduced immediately, full integration with specialised systems can come later. How hard can it be for someone in a control center to punch an eircode into a web browser and verify an address and location with a caller? It doesn't have to work perfectly to start with, but if it helps some of the time, why not embrace it wholeheartedly?

Describing them as "worse than useless" is so bloody typical of the traditional Irish negative approach to anything new. Heaven forbid that we might actually adapt and find new ways to do things better.
(end rant)

oscarBravo

MBSnr wrote: »

True. I do think though that the lack of Eircode on Google maps over 4 months since launch is a concern. Especially since a recent update, Google maps can now do drive turn by turn navigation 'offline'. I wonder where the delay is .... Google or the Eircode provider...?

Licensing negotiations, I suspect.

Sam Russell wrote: »

Eircode is a system of PPS numbers for addresses, and any random set of characters would have done as well.

See, that's the sort of criticism that I would consider outside the realm of "honestly-held opinion" and drifting into "just not true".

I mean, sure: it's sort of true, if you just ignore all the design criteria. But, as I've already said, it's trivial to design a postcode if the only criteria you have to meet are the arbitrary ones you've made up to suit yourself.

The comment that 'it is worse than useless' could relate to the emergency services having to explain to callers and others that the Eircode is not used by them because they have yet to incorporate it into their specialised terminals and that no satnav equipment uses it yet. That explaination takes time that could be better spent dealing with the emergency.

It could. I'm inclined to suspect that if he had a specific criticism, he would have mentioned it, and that it's more likely that he used "worse than useless" in that charmingly colloquial Irish sense that actually just means "useless" - which, more accurately, means "I personally don't have a use for it".

TheChizler

MBSnr wrote: »

Dated today.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/emergency-services-brand-eircode-worse-than-useless-365758.html

TLDR: Eircode currently isn't incorporated into any systems. They are currently in the process of incorporating Eircode into all of these systems. Unnamed source: "As it is, Eircode is worse than useless".

So the complaint seems to be at the lack of magic developers working on emergency services IT systems.

Sam Russell

TheChizler wrote: »

TLDR: Eircode currently isn't incorporated into any systems. They are currently in the process of incorporating Eircode into all of these systems. Unnamed source: "As it is, Eircode is worse than useless".

So the complaint seems to be at the lack of magic developers working on emergency services IT systems.

This thread is 6 years old. A few months back, Eircode was unveiled with 'Ta Dah' and as if by magic it is fully formed at birth.

Then the licencing agreement negotiations for users started, although you would think such negotiations would have started not long after the design phase started.

Now many months later, satnav companies still have not incorporated it into their products and no time scale as to when (and if) it will be incorporated. We have most state agencies (including An Post) still not using it and again no time scale as to when it will be incorporated.

You can see why frustration might rear itself. Personally, I think it is usable as it is, but a better design would be much better and much more use.

Mountainsandh

oscarBravo wrote: »

These criticisms amount, in sum, to "I would have designed it differently".

I have precisely one requirement of

...the same reflexive criticism problem that we've seen all too much of in this thread.

Of which you have just joyfully partaken.

oscarBravo

Mountainsandh wrote: »

Of which you have just joyfully partaken.

You seem to be confusing "criticism" and "discussion".

plodder

oscarBravo wrote: »

Eircode is a system of PPS numbers for addresses, and any random set of characters would have done as well.

See, that's the sort of criticism that I would consider outside the realm of "honestly-held opinion" and drifting into "just not true".

How so? There are significant similarities between Eircodes and PPS numbers. Both are unique identifiers. PPS numbers are unstructured/opaque. Eircodes are mostly unstructured also. Of all postcodes in the world, I suspect that Eircode is the one most like a PPS number/Social security number.

ukoda

MBSnr wrote: »

Dated today.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/emergency-services-brand-eircode-worse-than-useless-365758.html

What a piece of junk journalism.

A sensationalist headline, a story that contradicts that headline, and then a revelation at the end that the headline of "worse than useless" was just a quote from one anonymous person.

oscarBravo

plodder wrote: »

How so?

Because I was arguing with the assertion that "any random set of characters would have done as well."

So a postcode of F3CKY0U would have done as well as as D02 X285?

There were design criteria for the code. Yes, I get that other people would have used other design criteria, but the code isn't completely random, and the assertion that any random set of characters would have done as well is factually untrue.

Mountainsandh

oscarBravo wrote: »

You seem to be confusing "criticism" and "discussion".

So what you are in effect saying, is that it is acceptable in a discussion to give a personal perspective (as you did), but only when it is positive (ie not criticism).

In fact, as the last few pages of the thread illustrate, the "discussion" is pretty poor, with posters who simply cannot accept that Eircode is under scrutiny.

But Eircode was not designed for company/commercial use only, I was under the impression that the general public (also tax payers) were involved in "the great move" to a postal code system.
I think it is only right that the general public should also be entitled to scrutinize such a project, especially considering the amount of money spent on its design !

But this is tiresome and off-topic for the thread I think at this stage, so I will leave you to shower unmitigated praise on Eircode, and make the apology of lengthy delays in its implementation.

And I will valiantly continue to attempt to use this random string of numbers that, 5 months on, remain perplexing to everyone I know, bar my spouse and postman, in the hope that possibly some time in the future, it might actually be of use.

La Fenetre

Are people using them much ? They don't really seem to have taken off, and all the fuss has died down. I don't see even many government organisations using them on their addresses.

Mountainsandh

La Fenetre wrote: »

Are people using them much ? They don't really seem to have taken off, and all the fuss has died down. I don't see even many government organisations using them on their addresses.

SHHHHHH... Yes. They're used loads. Or soon will be. Like, some time. Soon. Anyway, they're used loads already.
And sure, that's just your own experience, doesn't count.

GJG

La Fenetre wrote: »

Are people using them much ? They don't really seem to have taken off, and all the fuss has died down. I don't see even many government organisations using them on their addresses.

If you take actual facts, you can see what is happening. I wrote this in August:

GJG wrote: »

Eircode is less than a month old, and Loc8 has been going for about seven years, so Loc8 have a clear advantage there, let’s see how well they have used it. The Loc8 code NP6 is roughly analogous to Dublin 1, though it contains a good chunk of Dublin 2, as well as elements of Dublin 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 15. The Loc8 code NP5 takes in the rest of Dublin 2, along with more chunks of Dublin 4,6, 6W, 8, and 14. But let’s be generous to Loc8 and only compare NP6 and NP5 with Eircodes D01 and D02.

• Search for the exact string “Dublin D01”
• Search for the exact string “Dublin D02”
• Search for the exact string “Dublin NP6”
• Search for the exact string “Dublin NP5”

The two Eircode results, between them, as of my searches, give 858 and 2,870 results. I know there will be some false positives in there, along with a load of missed references where people put in a comma or placed the Eircode in a slightly different position, but I'm applying the same criteria for Eircode and Loc8, so that doesn’t make much difference to the relative results.

For Loc8, the NP6 code, covering the whole of Dublin 1 and a chunk of city-centre Dublin 2, there are seven results. (Of those seven, four are the exact same Loc8 code.) The search for NP5, covering the rest of Dublin 2, plus a large swathe of Dublin 4,6, 6W, 8, and 14, the most densely-internetted place in the country, there is one result, which appears to be a coincidence, just junk text on an irrelevant page.

I’m sure there are false positives and repeats in the Eircode figure too, so let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, so the figure is a total of 3,728 for Eircode to eight for Loc8, a ratio of 466:1.

The Eircode searches now return tens of thousands of hits (the Loc8 search results are basically unchanged). That would indicate a pretty rapid rate of adoption, and it is a verifiable measure, rather than stories about somebody's friend's granny who didn't get a letter on time.

La Fenetre

Must be a sore point, I still don't see them being used much, and like most people I don't really care if they are used or not. I've lost the little card with ours on it, and I've no urge to find it, and I don't hear much about them anymore. They remind me of Joe Jacobs iodine tablets. We still have those, I kept them to remind me of how Ireland is run.

ukoda

Mountainsandh wrote: »

So what you are in effect saying, is that it is acceptable in a discussion to give a personal perspective (as you did), but only when it is positive (ie not criticism).

In fact, as the last few pages of the thread illustrate, the "discussion" is pretty poor, with posters who simply cannot accept that Eircode is under scrutiny.

But Eircode was not designed for company/commercial use only, I was under the impression that the general public (also tax payers) were involved in "the great move" to a postal code system.
I think it is only right that the general public should also be entitled to scrutinize such a project, especially considering the amount of money spent on its design !

But this is tiresome and off-topic for the thread I think at this stage, so I will leave you to shower unmitigated praise on Eircode, and make the apology of lengthy delays in its implementation.

And I will valiantly continue to attempt to use this random string of numbers that, 5 months on, remain perplexing to everyone I know, bar my spouse and postman, in the hope that possibly some time in the future, it might actually be of use.

You're entitled to scrutinise it. But be prepared to be corrected when you post factually inaccurate information.

"Eircode changed my address" is factually incorrect and very misleading.

"Eircode use my existing An Post defined postal address and I don't like this as it will lead to more people using my postal address" is the correct and factual way to put forward your concerns.

You can have your opinion and no one can change that but yourself. But if you are just plane wrong in what you say, then posters here will challenge you.

Calina

ukoda wrote: »

You're entitled to scrutinise it. But be prepared to be corrected when you post factually inaccurate information.

"Eircode changed my address" is factually incorrect and very misleading.

"Eircode use my existing An Post defined postal address and I don't like this as it will lead to more people using my postal address" is the correct and factual way to put forward your concerns.

You can have your opinion and no one can change that but yourself. But if you are just plane wrong in what you say, then posters here will challenge you.

Ukoda,

You're being disengenuous. The vast majority of people in this country were not aware that An Post did not use the geographic/physical addresses but had separate postal addresses. Since Eircode is based on the postal address and not the physical addresses, it is actually true for a lot of people that the imposition of eircode has resulted in the imposition of a new previously unknown address which does not really reflect their actual location.

The only way you can possibly argue against Mountainsandh is to consistently fail to recognise the issue that the country has two addressing paradigms - I'm reluctant to call either a system because addresses whether geographic or postal are hardly standardised or systematic in any way - one of which doesn't reflect reality and wasn't really all that well used by the public.

In the meantime, the Irish postal code system appears to have been entered in the electoral register. Only one person has used mine to send me stuff since it was officially launched and I've used it once myself.

I'm not sure that you can measure adoption of the postal code by doing an internet search on it. An internet search is not a proxy for delivery use. It would be more interesting to know what proportion of post and deliveries now have an eircode included on the delivery address. If people are not putting it on envelopes but are putting it on their website, that is not a reflection of its use as a delivery/addressing support.

Even if every single person in the country knew their postcode by heart and used it all the time does not mean that the design and implementation of it are beyond criticism. Most criticisms of its design and implementation cannot be responded with "well I am using it". For example, if all oscarbravo needs is a unique identifier on the house, it doesn't matter a damn to him how it was designed but elements of the design matter a damn to other people and other users and their criticisms should not be dismissed as irrelevant because it works perfectly for one person. Frankly we could have used emoji and if it was unique, it would have worked for oscarbravo based on his posts in this thread.

ukoda

Calina wrote: »

Ukoda,

You're being disengenuous. The vast majority of people in this country were not aware that An Post did not use the geographic/physical addresses but had separate postal addresses. Since Eircode is based on the postal address and not the physical addresses, it is actually true for a lot of people that the imposition of eircode has resulted in the imposition of a new previously unknown address which does not really reflect their actual location.

The only way you can possibly argue against Mountainsandh is to consistently fail to recognise the issue that the country has two addressing paradigms - I'm reluctant to call either a system because addresses whether geographic or postal are hardly standardised or systematic in any way - one of which doesn't reflect reality and wasn't really all that well used by the public.

In the meantime, the Irish postal code system appears to have been entered in the electoral register. Only one person has used mine to send me stuff since it was officially launched and I've used it once myself.

I'm not sure that you can measure adoption of the postal code by doing an internet search on it. An internet search is not a proxy for delivery use. It would be more interesting to know what proportion of post and deliveries now have an eircode included on the delivery address. If people are not putting it on envelopes but are putting it on their website, that is not a reflection of its use as a delivery/addressing support.

Even if every single person in the country knew their postcode by heart and used it all the time does not mean that the design and implementation of it are beyond criticism. Most criticisms of its design and implementation cannot be responded with "well I am using it". For example, if all oscarbravo needs is a unique identifier on the house, it doesn't matter a damn to him how it was designed but elements of the design matter a damn to other people and other users and their criticisms should not be dismissed as irrelevant because it works perfectly for one person. Frankly we could have used emoji and if it was unique, it would have worked for oscarbravo based on his posts in this thread.

No im not. Just because someone is ignorant of the real reason doesn't make it valid for them to claim another reason is responsible.

An Post have been "imposing" their address on people for years and will continue to do so with or without eircode

I recognise the issue with 2 addresses. I don't like it, I don't agree with it, I'd rather we all just had our geographical address. But I understand its origins and I don't make false claims about it.

oscarBravo

Calina wrote: »

I'm not sure that you can measure adoption of the postal code by doing an internet search on it.

It's fair to say that it's one metric for adoption; it's also fair to say that it's not by any means a definitive metric. I think it's also fair to say that rejecting a postcode system as "useless" because it hasn't achieved 100% adoption within a couple of months of its introduction is nothing more than typical Irish begrudgery.

Even if every single person in the country knew their postcode by heart and used it all the time does not mean that the design and implementation of it are beyond criticism.

True. Now, if you could only find someone, somewhere who has claimed that it's beyond criticism, you might have a point.

Most criticisms of its design and implementation cannot be responded with "well I am using it". For example, if all oscarbravo needs is a unique identifier on the house, it doesn't matter a damn to him how it was designed but elements of the design matter a damn to other people and other users and their criticisms should not be dismissed as irrelevant because it works perfectly for one person.

No, they shouldn't be dismissed for that reason. I'm arguing against the criticisms because they are high-level, theoretical complaints.

Basically, some people are saying "the code should have been designed in this way, or this other way" (and let's leave aside for a second that most of the ways in which people would have designed it differently are mutually incompatible) - but (with one notable exception) they're not saying "it would have been of benefit to my business/hobby/whatever if it was designed in this way, but as it is I can't use them". They are also saying things that are just downright factually untrue, and if you're going to give out to me for calling people on posting untruths, I don't know what to say to you.

I have never claimed Eircodes are perfect, or beyond criticism. I have pointed out that anyone who claims that they are "useless" or that "nobody is using them" is just partaking in that uniquely Irish pastime of bitching and moaning for their own amusement.

If someone wants to claim that there's something they can't do with Eircodes, but could have if they were designed differently, we can discuss that. If someone wants to claim they are useless and that nobody is using them, that person isn't interested in a discussion.

La Fenetre

La Fenetre wrote: »

Must be a sore point, I still don't see them being used much, and like most people I don't really care if they are used or not. I've lost the little card with ours on it, and I've no urge to find it, and I don't hear much about them anymore. They remind me of Joe Jacobs iodine tablets. We still have those, I kept them to remind me of how Ireland is run.

just wait until (all) the insurance companies start to insist on you providing your postcode before giving you a quote, then you'll have to use it.Postcodes are just one of those things that exist in the background of normal 21st century life, most of the time, you'll never even think about them.

larchill

The Electoral register is using it now, see the attached.

MBSnr

larchill wrote: »

The Electoral register is using it now, see the attached.

Well they have a 'search' box. Doesn't work for addresses around me in Mayo, as none are listed with their Eircode.

larchill

MBSnr wrote: »

Well they have a 'search' box. Doesn't work for addresses around me in Mayo, as none are listed with their Eircode.

Works for Co Louth (A91/A92).

MBSnr

larchill wrote: »

Works for Co Louth (A91/A92).

Hmm - I can't check but it does occur to me that maybe they have added Eircode to existing addresses with numbered houses and the rural ones are a 'work in progress'. Does it work for Louth on rural addresses?

larchill

MBSnr wrote: »

Hmm - I can't check but it does occur to me that maybe they have added Eircode to existing addresses with numbered houses and the rural ones are a 'work in progress'. Does it work for Louth on rural addresses?

No!

Mountainsandh

I think it might have messed up in some cases as it's showing our address/"electoral register" in the postal address county, but all our dealings with electoral register are in our geographical county.

I tried our Eircode and it returns an error message.

Rural location. County border.

plodder

Some authorities not supporting it at all, and of those that do, it appears not to work in many cases. Also, it complains that Eircodes with a space are not "valid". :rolleyes:

Hmm - I can't check but it does occur to me that maybe they have added Eircode to existing addresses with numbered houses and the rural ones are a 'work in progress'.

I don't really see why that should be a problem. If they have the database, they should be able to convert any Eircode to an address.

MBSnr

plodder wrote: »

I don't really see why that should be a problem. If they have the database, they should be able to convert any Eircode to an address.

But larchill posted that it works in Co. Louth but not for rural addresses. So I'm assuming that the matching of name/house number/road name to eircode is simple enough as the house number/road name are the cross reference.

However, how do they match my name and vague townland address to the correct Eircode to update the register?

plodder

MBSnr wrote: »

But larchill posted that it works in Co. Louth but not for rural addresses. So I'm assuming that the matching of name/house number/road name to eircode is simple enough as the house number/road name are the cross reference.

However, how do they match my name and vague townland address to the correct Eircode to update the register?

Yeah, I just checked a couple of examples. If there is a mismatch between the address on the electoral register and the address in Eircode, it doesn't work.

That could be quite a problem as (rural) addresses on the electoral register will often not have the postal town recorded. I think I mentioned a while ago that the new forms for updating the register have a space for Eircode. That would obviously fix the problem eventually, but would take years/decades.