Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2019 August 18

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August 18

Wichita linemen

Wikimedia's ISP 2620:0:862:ED1A::1 geolocates to 37° 45′ 3.60″ N latitude, 97° 49′ 19.20″ W longitude, as does that of astronomer Simon Cassidy (209.179.253.xxx). Both are in San Francisco but the geolocation is Wichita, Kansas. Is this one of the "default" locations discussed here recently where Google doesn't have enough information to geolocate accurately? This issue was discussed previously at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011 December 1#Geolocating an IP. 92.31.141.118 (talk) 14:33, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

As always, the first question is 'geolocates where'? For example, for the Wikimedia IPv6 IP, [1] shows it geolocates to in DB-IP and IP2Location. Likewise both give 209.179.253.128 somewhere in New York. ipinfo.io does show 37.7510° latitude -97.8220° longitude for both. Calling these coordinates Wichita, Kansas is the sort of thing which may be technically accurate (I don't know enough about US geographical descriptions to comment) but not particularly useful in this context since a quick look at Bing Maps or Google Maps show they are sort of the middle of Cheney Reservoir. So I'd have to say yes, for ipinfo.io the coordinates 37.7510° latitude -97.8220° longitude are one of their 'not sure where they are' examples. A quick search for "37.7510,-97.8220" shows a bunch of other IPs with the same thing e.g. 8.8.8.8. Our article on the reservoir suggests, unsourced, that Maxmind also uses somewhere in Cheney Reservoir as a default location. Nil Einne (talk) 09:59, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Do we have any explanation as to why they use a silly "default location" instead of just returning a "location not known" error ? SinisterLefty (talk) 12:33, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

My impression is that often these aren't really "location not known" but "location not known to our normal level". I think for both the above examples, the geolocation providers do believe, correctly that the location is somewhere in North America or maybe the US, or maybe even the contiguous US. They just don't know where exactly. Nominally their database and API should be able to tell users this, but they may have decided it's more trouble than it's worth in the early 2000s when they first started to do this and now of course changing is complicated. Nil Einne (talk) 16:41, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

I had an annoying similar experience when using some types of map software. I enter an address, including a ZIP code, and it acts like it found it, but it really just gives me the center of that ZIP code, so I end up there futilely looking for the business while plotting elaborate ways to kill whoever designed that web site. I've since stopped entering ZIP codes, so they can't do that to me any more. (PS: Why does Wikipedia's spell checker not recognize "center" ?) SinisterLefty (talk) 17:18, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia does recognise all British and American spellings, but perhaps your browser doesn't? You need to add alternative spellings to the user dictionary, but, infuriatingly, updates tend to remove this. Does anyone know where it is stored in each browser, and is there a way to create a common user dictionary that doesn't get deleted? Dbfirs 18:01, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. That was in Linux Mint's Firefox, which must somehow be using the British English spellchecker. SinisterLefty (talk) 12:33, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Meant to say "For example, for the Wikimedia IPv6 IP, [2] shows it geolocates to San Francisco in DB-IP and IP2Location" above Nil Einne (talk) 16:56, 19 August 2019 (UTC)