I see the same type of behavior that you are reporting. When I do the
query

http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&api_key=e81ef81\
02a5160154ef4662adcc9046b&user_id=48600101146%40N01&machine_tags=geo%3A&extras=m\
achine_tags

(http://tinyurl.com/2sjxhm)

to query for my pictures that use the geo: machine tag name space and
ask for the machine tags, I get the "-" and "." stripped out. I would
agree that machine tags should be returned in their raw form not
"clean" form.

For the specific case of geotags, if the same values are actually
using the Flickr-native storage of geoinformation, you can tack on the
geo to extras to get latitude and longitude attributes:

http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&api_key=e81ef81\
02a5160154ef4662adcc9046b&user_id=48600101146%40N01&machine_tags=geo%3A&extras=m\
achine_tags%2C+geo

(http://tinyurl.com/2pm92s)

Not a general solution but one that might help you for now....

-Raymond

--- In yws-flickr@yahoogroups.com, "Mark Zeman" <mark@...> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> When using photos.search and including machine tags the negative
> values for geo:lat and geo:lon get stripped out rendering them useless.
>
> Am I missing something here or is this a major known bug in the way
> machine tags are returned.
>
> For example:
>
> geo:lat=-41.27827 entered into Flickr page
>
> machine_tags="geo:lat=4127827 geo:lon=17327017" returned by
photos.search
>
> Where did my minus value and decimal go? Why are they being cleaned up
> via the photo.search API? How do I get my raw machine tag returned.
> Please don't say use photos.getInfo, that's want I'm trying to avoid
> when checking thousands of photos.
>