Talk:Postal code

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Dear Man & Woman
Please inform me if an information source where I may locate a list of nations of the world that "do not" have postal codes. Your assistance shall be sincerely appreciated.  Thank you,  C. Robert Keathley, opa@pflash.com
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Hm, well that's an interesting enquiry ... the encyclopedia doesn't usually work quite like that, it usually tries to grow the encylopedia itself, rather than respond directly to enquiries ... and yours is particularly tricky because you're looking for an absence of something, which might be a bit hard to see! Have you tried the (external link to) Universal Postal Union website? They have a section on postcodes - maybe you will get some help there. Good luck. By the way I have responded here rathert than dirrectly to your email becasue I sort of think that's more what we should be doing. I hope this helps. Nevilley 18:13 Dec 11, 2002 (UTC)
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Can 'numbers' and 'digits' be used interchangeably? I thought numbers could consist of any number of digits, but I am not a native speaker of English. branko
You're right, though. Deb 17:28, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Same in Canada...Canada Post is government-run, so it's not that the government is interfering with a private business. Other companies just use the postal codes specified by Canada Post. Adam Bishop 20:04, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

text: if we change it, we should look at other articles as well. i once change inconsistance between AN and LD.
*A1 - is more like example
*AN - AlphaNumeric and the same as in UPU-documents
*DL - 
Tobias Conradi 19:50, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Old posts from 2002-2004

message: Do the country names need to be bold? --Hemanshu 12:25, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do the country names need to be bold? 

message: We now have information on how to write an address in Sweden (). I think we need to keep this article to just information on post codes - what do you think? --Tim 21:16, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree. Cleaned the page. TrueColour (talk) 14:09, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too much information? 

message: In fact UK used limited postcodes in major cities in the 19th Century - London, Manchester etc.
This was extended in the 1st world war when all the experienced postal sorters went off to war and replacements with no experience in sorting were brought in.
Article is correct in that a system was not adopted for the whole country until the 60s.
202.130.120.26 07:36, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Germany First? 

message: Hi there.  My name is Jordan Taylor and I was wondering if whoever the editor of the postal code (wikipedia) page is could review my site.  I think it would make an excellent external link to the article not only because we offer a great postal/zip code lookup service, but also because we are currently listed as number on Google for the search query "postal code lookup" right after Canada post.
Anyway, here is the information for the site www.postalcodelookup.ca
Name: Postal Code Lookup
URL:  http://www.postalcodelookup.ca/
Description:  This site provides its users with access to useful postal and zip code listings, as well as other mailing components.
Thanks for your time,  any questions please feel free to email me at <redacted>
99.228.195.127 19:23, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link Idea 

message: In Europe most countries now do no longer accept country prefixes in front of the post code as this can cause problems during the sorting process. Rather than prefixes the country name should be printed in full in the last line of the address. Ipwaz2003 09:59, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If you can find some formal recommendations by some of these countries and/or by a European or world-wide standards body, please provide some references and improve the section. i had a look around and the best source i found was Frank da Cruz' page: http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/postal.html#europe . Looking through the websites of the various official international bodies, it was not easy to find anything which seems to be a recommended standard. Even the UPU URL which i've put - http://www.upu.int/post_code/en/formatting_an_international_address_en.pdf - discusses the issue in a sentence which is grammatically faulty. i'm also curious about this UPU document's mention of "EN ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2" codes. Does this mean that there are a different set of ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 codes for every language according to the UPU? i.e. FR ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 codes and  DE ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 codes and JA ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 codes and so on? Surely that would defeat the whole point of an international standard...  Clearly the document is not that carefully written. Boud (talk) 14:05, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Country prefix 

message: Could someone give me postal code of any area in USA (I mean,city)?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by ModernTalking81 (talk • contribs) 16:34, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There are plenty of online sources including usps.com. ww2censor (talk) 17:24, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Could someone give me postal code of any area in USA (I mean,city)? 

message: The Philippine Postal Corporation refers to the postal codes as ZIP codes because despite being long independent from U.S. colonization, the government still has a predilection towards the U.S. This an example of colonial mentality.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.125.33.139 (talk) 19:41, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Postal/ZIP Codes in the Philippines 

message: A partial update on the Irish postcode proposal can be found here Irish Times Tuesday, September 9, 2008  .--Trounce (talk) 13:37, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The Irish Timesnewspaper report says that government departments will make savings but still no details or introduction date have been announced. ww2censor (talk) 14:26, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

text: Can you make a scan and show an Irish source item. Are these An Post forms you refer to? Who told you to use a telephone code and can you get that in writing? Are there any verifiable sources for this? ww2censor (talk) 17:27, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ireland 

message: The old German system consisted of two digits PLUS ONE LETTER. My birthplace had "21a".
Phosphoros  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.102.96.226 (talk) 12:14, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have any verifiable sources for this statement? If so, we can add it to the article, otherwise we will not add it. Thanks ww2censor (talk) 01:02, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: File:PLZ-DE-1946.jpg --66.18.5.4 (talk) 20:25, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Germany 

message: Postal codes were first implemented in the USSR from 1932 through 1939. They were called "Indexes" and were represented by a "number–letter–number" code, e.g., 12Y1, 14Y8 etc. The Cyrillic "Y" in the middle stood for "Ukraina." At that time, Kharkiv was the capital of the Ukrainian SSR, and the prefixes 1 to 10 before the "Y" were devoted to that city, where the system was founded; prefix numbers 11 to 20 were reserved for Kiev. The suffix digit indicated smaller postal districts. This system was discontinued at the start of the Second World War.
http://zip.belpost.by/content/history
142.244.43.106 (talk) 22:18, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  First postal "Indexes" introduced in Ukraine (USSR) in 1932 

message: I added to some articles:
TrueColour (talk) 02:55, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Continent in topic 

message: This article repeats the erronoeous belief that house name and postcode uniquely identifies a building in the UK. 
If you check http://postcode.royalmail.com/portal/rm/addressfinder
and look for house number 1 at HD7 5XA you will find no fewer than eleven number ones in that postcode. This is surely not unique.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.8.33.69 (talk) 13:39, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Erroneous information about UK postcodes 

message: Doesn't this really mean that (some or all) Australian post offices have their postcodes on their external signs?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.189.103.145 (talk) 15:49, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Postcodes are generally clearly visible outside Australia Post offices.

message: The Format section of this article duplicates what is in List of postal codes. I suggest removing the section and having just a link to List of postal codes. Lkmorlan (talk) 14:24, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Both say they may be incomplete. It may be a pain to compare them, unless somone has already. Could we just collapse this section if they don't contain the same info? Fine with me to delete and link if they do match.--Canoe1967 (talk) 13:11, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Both are identical. There were two different lists formatted differently. I merged the content on the other page into this one and copied the resulting content onto the other page.Lkmorlan (talk) 16:39, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

text: However just moving the section without leaving a short summary should not take place. ww2censor (talk) 14:54, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Since the 2 lists are currently identical, I have removed the list from this article to reduce the risk of the 2 diverging and otherwise becoming a maintenance headache. If there is any objection then I suggest the list be made into a template so any updates only need to be applied once. Ww2censor, I couldn't think of a suitable summary, please will you add something suitable. Hope this all helps. Op47 (talk) 19:32, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: That move appears to be a resasonable one so long as a short summary is left to provide context, as I mentioned previously. But Op47, you have not done that yet. ww2censor (talk) 21:59, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move Format section to [[List of postal codes]] 

message: The section titled "Precision" has a lot of information on certain countries' general code formats.  Such information is not directly related to precision, and besides, the information given for the US is inaccurate.  I suggest some pruning.  Doctor Whom (talk) 23:12, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I've made the proposed change to the US section.  I'll do the UK section later unless someone wants to beat me to it. Doctor Whom (talk) 01:07, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Precision 

message: According to the article, postcodes were first used in the USSR in the 1930s. Would the London postal district codes - in use as abbreviated letters from the 1850s - count as an early form? "London NW" seems to be a "postal code" albeit a very basic one. Numbers were added in WWI. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:11, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  History 

message: It is not very clear from the article what the actual purpose of postal codes is. Only a brief note that it is for purpose of sorting mail, without any further details.
--francesco3 (talk) 12:24, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing info on the purpose of postal codes  

message: Some long-standing links have been removed due, apparently, to a perceived conflict of interest. Please note that I receive absolutely nothing through visits to the pages concerned. There is no pay per click advertising and the fixed advertising simply helps to offset the hosting costs. The links are for resources considered authoritative and have been published (in book form and now online) since 1994, and are the result of 22 years of continuous research. I add them to provide a quality resource to Wikipedia users. Please consider restoring: Global Sourcebook for International Data Management, http://www.grcdi.nl/linkspc.htm Links to pages on the web with information about postal codes and http://www.grcdi.nl/linkspo.htm Links to postal service web pages. Thank you.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grahamrhind (talk • contribs) 15:53, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links - addition request 

message: The map lists that the US uses a 10 digit postal code. While this is technically true in theory, in practice it tends to get rarely used, and very few people even know their ZIP+4 by heart because it is not very useful to them. I know there are other concerns that people have with the map, but I think that it should be listed as both 5 and 9 digits, striped to signify that it has both. Calling ZIP codes 9 digits doesn't sit well for me, because it is mostly not used that way.
Dangeredwolf (talk) 12:34, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  ZIP vs ZIP+4 in the US on the map 

message: The text says 'In February 2005, 117 of the 190 member countries of the Universal Postal Union had postal code systems.' - could a newer figure be used (or add 'and in (date) the numbers were ...). Jackiespeel (talk) 11:27, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update 

message: Some some references should be added to this unsourced section. To me it seems more like a creative idea than real life criticism. Some claims seem unrealistic, eg. "without administrative cost". Who have criticized the system in which countries in which media? References, or the section shuld be deleted. --Madglad (talk) 13:26, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, I agree that the text was bad... I edited, please check. After it I can cite sources... I am looking for, and back here later.  Krauss (talk) 23:43, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Extending the text doesn't solve the problem with no sources. And the text still can be shortened to: "Somebody has somewhere posed an idea of replacing the postal code system". I am removing the section. It can be found in the article history and reinserted with sources. --Madglad (talk) 06:29, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section "Criticism from the 2010s"