Talk:Key:ref name

Confusing description and unclear use of tag

The current English text does not make much sense, and I am having difficulty understanding how this tag is used. Is it added automatically by some import or bot feature related to search results? --Jeisenbe (talk) 14:05, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

As far as I understand the use, ref_name provides a name for digital systems like timetables (in Germany e.g. of "Deutsche Bahn" railway company), that sometimes differs from the common name, that you want to be shown on the map but leads in more than one result on queries. With ref_name you can record the name, that leads in exactly one result, which might be helpful to link such search systems with the map.
I tried to enhance translation and description on the key's page. --Chris2map (talk) 17:46, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

This was indeed a mess and not clear on its own (without knowing the backstory and reading the German wiki page). I have pretty much rewritten it completely to make it clearer and get rid of the various weird details that actually don't matter in the general use case of this key and were making understanding it much harder. It might have been better if we would have used something like ref:HAFAS=* or similar for the original use case, and official_name=* for what I deem the more generic case. But on the other hand, as mentioned in the text, there might be cases where we have a common/short name, an official name, a ref_name, and a numeric ref and then all of them are useful to avoid lists in values. Anyway, feedback and refinements welcome. --Stefanct (talk) 22:42, 14 July 2022 (UTC)