Talk:List of postal codes

In response to Ezhiki's request regarding the movement of Postal Code material to Wikipedia the following was copied his user talk page to allow for comments from others.

Thanks for the question about the postal codes. Many of these were put here in the earliest days of Wikisource by people who did not like lists in Wikipedia. Ultimately, after applying Wikipedia's "Votes for Deletion process" they were first removed and then restored when it was realized that a vote that was interpreted as for deletion should have been read as for keeping. Since then there have been additions to both projects, but not necessarily postal codes for the same places.

To me Wikipedia is the place for such lists. These are really as much lists of cities as they are lists of codes. Since articles about cities are a part of Wikipedia links from these lists to the cities themselves are more easily created on Wikipedia. Some arguments have been made that these lists can be considered as source material, and I suppose that in a way they are. It all depends how you define "source". Lists on either project should reflect the kinds of things that are normally in that project. Eclecticology 05:34, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer. While I could argue that postal codes better belong here, in sources, than in wikipedia, I do also understand why they are in wikipedia now. To me (personally), it would seem to work the best in wikipedia pointed to wikisource whenever lists are involved.

My reasoning is as follows: imagine a regular (book) encyclopedia. It would contain articles on a variety of topics, however, when it comes to lists (or original texts for that matter), they would either not be in the book, or would be placed in appendices. So it seems logical to put appendix-worth material in wikisource, and leave wikipedia to the articles.

It's just a suggestion, of course. I am pretty new to wiki*, maybe your practices are different, and I do understand that wikisource is a quite recent endeavor. If you could put this polemic out for discussion, I would certainly appreciate that.

--Ezhiki 14:40, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

See also en:Talk:Lists of postal and zip codes of the world/Delete. Angela 02:57, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It doesn't belong to the 'pedia nor to Wikisource. That's the same point of view that I have for postal codes lists: they are not an encyclopedia article, nor a source text. They are a reference material that should be provided by the institution that holds them, ie: the U.S. Postal Service. Be it either on their website or on each station. However, we are not limited by storing space, which means that having a Wikisource page of them wouldn't hurt anyone. But alas, it seems that the 'pedia has claimed them. --Maio 04:37, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

While the postal codes would indeed be better classified as reference than as "sources", I would disagree that the page should merely link to the institutions. USPS, for example, does provide an online lookup form to find a ZIP code by location (and vice versa), but they do not (and, to my knowledge never will) put a list of ALL ZIP codes in the USA. Considering this, Wikisource would be a really good source for such materials.

Another fine example of publicly available information not available in public domain would be UPC barcodes.

On the other side, I do agree that keeping such information current is a great challenge. Even relatively stable ZIP codes are updated (added and removed) periodically by USPS. Perhaps it would be the best to keep information as current as possible while still linking to the institutions' websites.

Postal Codes (and other such stuff) change all the time. Our list would almost certainly not be up-to-date. Methinks it does not belong here. [[PaulinSaudi 08:51, 13 May 2004 (UTC)]]