Places updates

Richard,

Is your issue the fact that the airstip update placed so many updates on the map or is there something else we can look at?

I have just taken the airstrip updates off the latest map so this has reduced the amount of places. I am working in places all the time so any feedback on ideas of how to make it beter are always welcome.

DM

You seem to be making a comment about the basic search I can change this to a LIKE search if you think that would help I made it look at the start of the string to try to quickly reduce the results to gain a closer match if I use a LIKE match and you type per for instance you get around 10,000 results with the start of string you get around 500 and then the next characters bring you down to 10 and so on. It is a difficult balance in textual searching but I am always open to suggections?

We are also thinking of bringing together a number of the POI types into groups so say Camping/Accomodation would auto include all Camp Free, Camp Fee, Caravan Park and Motel/Resort into one mapped group so you can quickly navigate the map to find your result. This may help a bit, we tend to find we use map search most of the time and not text but let me know what you guys want and we will work on it to make it better.

David

Richard,

My Home update also installed.

Sorry, I'm up in BK, and just got home from the Club.. hic,

I will try and say what I mean tomorrow. stay in side day exp. 44 deg C.

Cheers

Richard

Well seems there is no reason for me to reply.

Places is perfect

don't know what all the fuss was about.. :-)

Well done

Cheers

Richard

You are dead right oone this and I have aged the airstrip update to 20/18/2008 which has taken them out of the latest updates layer. This has solved it partly.

David

Airstrip updates now removed from main map so the latest updates are easily seen - the member My Home updates since last logon is a little harder to solve but I am on it.

DM

Hi David,

Is it possible when you zoom on a selected area, to be able to select all places instead of just once place type from the drop down menu?

Cheers
Alan

Alan,

Excellent question. Answer yes it is possible however we would have to be on a close zoom as the number of features shown would be enourmous - When you add the mountain/peak/hill layer you will see what I mean. This is the reason we have layer by layer, however it is also a pain to have to add them one at a time.
This is why we are thinking of bringing together a number of the POI types into groups so say Camping/Accomodation would auto include all Camp Free, Camp Fee, Caravan Park and Motel/Resort into one mapped group, other mater layers such as hydrogology to add all water types. I am wanting to get the master POI list down to less than 8 and have then as checkboxes in the map window so it is easy to see them and turn them on and off.

How does this sound? I can do the turn on all features and map it - there will be a performance penality but it is possible. Lets keep working on this and thanks for bringing it up.

DM

Thanks David,

POI groups sounds OK vs Performance issues.

Cheers

Things are looking better already. The other problem that occurred through this, is once you log off (not having viewed any of the updates, because I didn't know which ones they were) the next time you log in, its not possible to track down those updates you haven't seen yet. That means you have to visit every category and look at every place to see which are new, and that is just not practical. What that boils down to, is that any updates in the last month or so have gone unseen.

Any change to reduce the number of categories would be welcome, that would then improve the text search and increase the possibility of getting a hit on the one you are looking for. I have often done a text search for a particular name e.g. whistleduck creek, old policeman's waterhole etc.... and the search has come up "nil". when those places actually existed (I put them on the site). But they they don't show up now. Whistleduck waterhole comes up (without any info provided), but its real name is whistleduck creek waterhole.

To be honest, I gave up trying to update places sites, or add new ones, because every time I did it would come up with some sort of "string" error. As I said, when I finally did manage to upload whistleduck creek and old policeman's waterhole, future attempts to locate them and update them in places failed.
Fred

Fred,

I just typed in Old Poli in the places basic search and the drop down list of matches showed me Old Police Station Waterhole - NT. I also typed whistledu and the drop down showed me Whistleduck Waterhole - NT first results and no other weird pages. Can you tell me how you are trying to find these places.

BTW: You do not need to add Features on the map in order to use Basic Search - just type in what you are looking for and the results will drop down - mind you as mentioned to Richard earlier the list does look from left to right in order to get to results faster but I could adjust this to match any part so police in this case would match Old Policemans (it just makes the search a little slower but it may be worth a try).

Also the content cannot just disappear I am curious as to what may have happened - we have logs of every update that occurs in places so we should be able to back track any updates that may have gone missing. Do you remember when these updates occured.

The map on the Places home page shows your updates for the last 2 weeks so you can just click on the little marker and see what it is. I currently do not have a textual updates list (other than the one I just put up in the Member Home Page) however we could investigate doing this.

Be confident that you upates will not go away - we are very happy to receive these updates as we do not know it all and rest assured we do not want the information to go away. I am working on a load of new updates that will allow you to actually edit the content on the view page (this will save heaps of time).

David

Fred,

No problems - I have also just added a new button on the places index and place show page which is called Updates Last 14 Days - this will give you a new result window with the latest updates shown in a textual way. I have also adjusted the search output window in line with this update so the search pop up window and the latest pop up use the hoverover show system that shows more of the please detail when you hover your mouse over the name. Anyway have a look at these and see if these updates also help.

David