Talk:Natural Area Code

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Untitled[edit]

The system is described as "a base 30 grid with 30 rows and 30 columns". It is also apparently a spherical coordinate system based on latitude and longitude, judging from the company's description on its website. I have trouble seeing how a spherical coordinate system can be a "grid" with rows and columns. It that possible? Pfly 01:54, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Very proprietary[edit]

The NAC system is heavily IP-encumbered. The company claims copyright on the rudimentary divide-by-30 algorithm and base-30 alphabet used to convert from latitude/longitude to NAC. This is unusual for such a simple and straightforward algorithm.

From the company's "Legal and Licensing" page at http://www.nacgeo.com/nacsite/licensing/:

"The Natural Area Coding System is a proprietory standard that requires licenses to use in any applications except endusers. Any uses of the Natural Area Coding System or any of its derived systems including any maps with NAC grids and any intelligent devices such as computers, GPS receivers, mail sorting equipment in either hardware or software that have the capability to input, display, retrieve, store, or process the Natural Area Coding System or any of its derived systems require licenses from NAC Geographic Products Inc."

This means that without a license, I cannot write software to convert between NAC and other systems such as latitude/longitude. transverse Mercator, or Thomas Guide coordinates (which are also protected, but represent much more original work). These terms may impose a serious limit on the claimed widespread acceptance of NAC. DerbertBeak 18:34, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unique?[edit]

An 8-character cell is not unique to all the houses and buildings in the world. There are many places in the world where structures are closer than 50 meters apart.

Notability?[edit]

Are there independent and reliably published sources that go into depth about this system that we can use to establish its notability? Google scholar found only 9 papers mentioning it, and some of them mention it only very briefly as an example of a grid-based system. One of the sources that does go into depth seems to explicitly argue against notability, calling NAC "another not very popular coordinate system". I hesitate to take more drastic steps with this article after the uproar over the related deletion of Base 30, but its current unsourced state is not acceptable. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:08, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Notability is not popularity. We're surely planning to keep Ford Edsel and buggy whip. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:05, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, but those were all well known at one time. Was this? —David Eppstein (talk) 16:05, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Officially adopted by the state of Mongolia as the main addressing system: [1] Yk4ever (talk) 18:26, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'd still like to see non-primary sources about this (the link you give is primary) but that is enough to at least sway my opinion from its previous value of "the fact that all sources are primary suggests that it is likely not notable" to "likely to be notable but needs better sourcing". —David Eppstein (talk) 18:57, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Mongolia passed a resolution to use it in 2008, but was it ever carried out? I can't find anything beyond the resolution press releases. There is no mention in any WP:RSS. The article itself makes no WP:Credible claim of significance. Thundermaker (talk) 01:57, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalization[edit]

What's the rationale for capitalizing the article title, the term natural area code in the article body, and other terms that are not common nouns? If there's no discussion on this in the next few days, I'll move the page and get rid of the nonstandard title case. If there's any hint of controversy, I'll add a page move discussion request tag. Holy (talk) 21:51, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The rationale is that this is a proprietary system and we're using the name and capitalization given by its proprietors. It's the same reason we don't lowercase Coca-Cola or (to pick a random example from your recent edits) Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:18, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]