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Post by Joe Goldberg on Dec 29, 2010 14:05:32 GMT -5
Hi Everyone,
If you're reading this, it means you contribute to 43 Places by adding and editing places, creating lists, adding photos, etc.
It also means you're the target audience for a new 43 Places feature we're starting to work on.
We'd like to create a portal or destination for everyone who wants to help improve 43 Places. The current Problems tool will become a subset of this bigger tool, where you can also help contribute by curating lists, making sure all neighborhoods are represented in key cities, and whatever else you can think of to help 43 Places at the time.
Since we're in the beginning stage of the project, we'd love to get your feedback about what you'd like this tool to look like. Anything you have to offer would help. Descriptions, things you don't want it to look like, suggestions, etc. What would such a tool look like to you? Let us know!
We'll follow-up in a bit to give you all an early peek at what we come up with so stay tuned.
As always, thanks for everything you do!
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Post by danimatian on Dec 29, 2010 15:29:35 GMT -5
settings priorities would be nice.
like sometimes there is a correctly named thing on the wrong spot, you can' t just move it to the right spot in hierarchy or it will auto-merge with the lesser used place already in the correct hierarchy.
The fix has been to rename the dupe "place name duplicate" then move the correct one in and merge them after the rename takes place.
if you put all the problems in at once, it will do the move and try the auto-merge, then do the rename later. you have to do them one at a time and remember you had all these multiple problems to deal with.
If I could report a problem for the rename, flag it as an "ASAP fix", then set up the other lesser important ones and flag them as a 'take your time fix' then it waits a half a day or something before processing those ones, that would be helpful
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Post by ninjaneko on Jan 4, 2011 13:30:20 GMT -5
Sounds nice. I don't have a large wishlist for 43places/problems at the moment... I'd like to get the 'best of lists' feature back for the lists, so you could for instance see which country is the most visited comparing everybody's "countries visited" list. And the ability to order lists again (something I can't really manage to do now if they are large). At the moment I also have problems changing the place type - somebody else voted 'region', clicking 'disagree' doesn't work, I have to put in the entire url to 'force' my vote.
The only problems (ha) I have using the problems tool is the bigger mergers that don't get processed (maybe intentional as double check or just a system restriction) and on an organisational level the 'multiple parent' issues. And I've had the same problem as Danimation describes. Trying to cleanup multiple things, I merged something in the wrong order (the correctly named into the wrongly named) and now I can't rename the place as it still tries to merge to the one that was already merged, this keeps failing. The priority thing might help here.
If you really want to go bigger, maybe it's worth looking into expanding the problems feature to the other sites? There are duplicate goals on 43Things too, and I think allconsuming could also benefit from some mergers (or at least the option to link to "other version") for all the home made entries that have identical amazon entries too. That way I don't have to select 5 versions of the same movie to have accurate lists on listsofbest.
And Happy New Year!
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Post by sipes23 on Jan 9, 2011 23:42:25 GMT -5
Features I occasionally dream about (in no particular order and no regard to difficulty of coding):
*greater ease of re-ordering lists
*lists taking up less space. I find them difficult to scan, though consistency of appearance with the rest of the site is excellent.
*greater ease in searching for lists (they can be really hard to find)
*tagging lists
*more dynamic appearance of questions (e.g. I asked a question about Dawson City. Obviously it should show up with Dawson City. I asked it there. Its answer will most pertain to that location. But it might get answered if it showed up with Yukon, and once answered it may lead people looking at Yukon to check out Dawson City. So maybe it could be useful if users could designate a secondary location for the question.)
*removal of place lists from listsofbests.com, or reinclusion. Right now it feels like the worst of both worlds to me. The place lists are there at listsofbests.com on my user page and on the main search bar, but they don't work. So, +1 to ninjaneko. Or -1. But the status quo is kind of irksome to me.
*bring back the "I'm willing to answer questions about this place" feature. I liked it. I didn't often click it, but as a new user it made me feel part of the community.
*have a policy about foreign names. Why is Roma in Italy? Likewise, Firenze is in Toscana, both of which are in Italy. München is in Germany. Etc. (Or maybe there is and I'm too clueless to realize it.)
*ghost places. Places that used to be, but aren't anymore. Tiger Stadium. (Real) Comiskey Park. Or places that went out of business. Restaurants, etc.
*keep it old browser friendly. I've got an older computer--partly by choice. I can't use Flash 10 or Firefox 3, so sites that use lots of it are buggy (YouTube and Zynga games are major culprits here). Guess what sites I don't go as often--even when I'm using my newer computer? Score points if you answered YouTube and Zynga. I suspect I am in a minority on this one, but I know MFM had problems at 43Places caused by IE6 in 2010. Of course, this just creates whole new layers of coding problems, no?
As for a Data Janitor portal (for lack of a better term), I could find that useful. I like 43Places and want it to be excellent. If I had some sort of project-du-jour to help cobble away at, that could be useful. Right now I try to keep loose tabs on places I know well (e.g. northern Illinois, the central UP), but on occasion I see a place where there is lots of slop. Brazil and Guatemala are recent places Iʻve noticed. Since I'm not an expert on those places, I've got to nose around wikipedia to make sure I'm not making the problem worse.
Maybe part of the portal could be allowing me to curate a certain section of the site. For example, I tend to add addresses but not photos when I create a place. Maybe I could somehow indicate that I'm willing to add addresses to "destination" places in Illinois. When I came to the portal, the site could present a short list of "destinations" in Illinois that need addresses. Same could be done for photos, etc.
Most importantly, allowing for a way to become a Data Janitor--at whatever capacity a user can/wants to contribute--should help vet information to a degree.
That could also allow you to have several sorts of Data Janitors. One sort that keeps tabs on a specific sort of data in specific locations. Another that deals with problems requiring somewhat local expertise. (e.g. Today there are problems dealing with parts of Sweden. I can't reasonably know alternate names for theme parks there. Upshot: I ignore it.) Another sort that deals with photos--photo tags are nearly opaque to me beyond "this isnʻt the right place". Maybe someone to keep tabs on the off-site material on each places right column. That column can sometimes feature some weird stuff when names are similar.
I'm all for keeping the site fairly open. For a new user to be able to add a place they want to go to may turn them into a return user who adds a great neighborhood restaurant who then becomes a regular contributor.
That opens up the site to things like this (http://www.43places.com/places/view/977594/ashton-house-crystal-lake-illinois). I can't quite make myself merge this thing out of existence (for what it's worth, I think it is a former place in Crystal Lake). Having some sort of Data Janitor check on new users' contributions could have some value. Again, another sort of Data Janitor.
I'm rambling and my talk has gotten disorganized. I love this site and want it to be excellent. Not every change will make every user happy. (Just don't make me buy a new computer when you redesign the site. ;D )
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Post by Joe Goldberg on Jan 13, 2011 13:41:04 GMT -5
Thank you folks for the suggestions. It's hard to incorporate everything (especially since the thread kind of turned into a "suggestions about 43 Places as a whole") but we really appreciate the feedback from our biggest users, and we'll take it into account.
Joe
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Post by ninjaneko on Jan 27, 2011 4:48:03 GMT -5
I just thought of something else I'd like to have added (it may have been suggested before in another post in this forum too): being able to search on place id would help with merging/relocating duplicate places with special characters or unindexed places. For instance: I'm trying to relocate something to www.43places.com/places/view/669325/russian-far-east-russia. Typing in "Russian Far East" in the problem field doesn't give me any correct results, but if I could search for "669325" in there that wouldn't be a problem. This seems to already work in the normal site search, just not for the problem interface. |
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