so i've been happily adding in postcodes that I know.
however when searching it seems osm doesnt' seem to search the postcode field, you just get the free the postcode results
however my home street which i post coded as i made it, osm search picks up, the search function returns my street name, i'm finding this a bit frustrating, as a delivery driver i've added in some unusual postcodes (ones that don't seem to be on any map/gps/royal mail/etc) that i've confirmed with the people who live their and added, however these don't seem to come back in the search results (the last edits i've done are over a month ago and still not showing up!)
slightly frustrated, and wondering if i should contiune adding little bits here and there, i've left it for well over a month now, but went down some nice ackward lanes to find some farms today and decided it would be a good idea to add them in (if only for myself in the future when i forget ware they are!)
Comment from TomH on 19 August 2008 at 18:05
The database that drives postcode searches is primarily derived from the data entered at www.freethepostcode.org and www.npemaps.org.uk and not from anything in the main OSM database.
I'm not sure how often it is updated - we query it via a web API on the npemaps site I believe.
Comment from mcknut on 19 August 2008 at 18:06
I think postcodes tend to be considered fairly low priority in OSM, but I always add them when I can. In my city all the road names show the first half of the postcode so I also add that to pretty much every street I add. Keep putting them in, they'll come in useful eventually and you'll only kick yourself for the times you didn't bother!
Comment from marinheiro on 20 August 2008 at 00:45
I wish I'd done that for my area - I'm just finishing off the last few streets, and have realised now I need to go back over it all again to do the postcodes; like mcknut's, they're on the street signs. Doh.
Comment from davidearl on 20 August 2008 at 09:23
The namefinder searches do accept postcodes, but the way they work is to try to find an address by a web search and then look up the address in our database. That's because postcodes generally weren't - still aren't - stored in OSM.
However, if this is becoming more common, I can modify the search to include postcodes in the index (as well as the translation type search). It won't happen until I reload the index from scratch which takes many days; I am tentatively thinking about doing this over Christmas. I will also invite other suggestions of things to include in the index which aren't at present before I do that.
Comment from Stead on 21 August 2008 at 19:57
the postcode search is my best friend! :)
whenever I look for a new street i haven't been down, or an old one i forget i always used the postcode search to check the names, since many streets are welsh and english, and odd's are the map i'm looking at has the other langauge than whats on my parcel, if hte postcode search could be put in to at least give an option from osm i'd greatly appricate it!:)
Comment from Socratestravels on 7 October 2008 at 10:55
marinheiro, maybe it's better for us to learn programming and write some sort of script which adds tags to a selected area and automatically adds the postcodes to them. Then everyone can use it and we don't have to do lots of work separately, thus saving lots of time.