Groundspeak Portal

As it says in the byline, this section is for discussing changes, bugs and feature enhancements on Waymarking.com.

As we make changes to the site, however minor, we will post regular updates in this topic in order to  receive feedback from you.

Please don't feel it's necessary to limit your comments to critiques/criticisms, as remarking on "wishlist" features and complimenting current features can be extremely valuable as well!

I added coordinates to my  message regarding Ginormous objects and then tried to do a search by coordinates but I can't seem to figure it out. Is this turned on yet or is there a quick turorial you can give for this new feature.

http://portal.groundspeak.com/search/

Choose "located near" and enter the coordinates. We also incorporated Yahoo lookups if you prefer to post a topic based on an address, or city, or zipcode, etc.

If you want to find my Hello World post, search by postal code 98121.

Here is my list of FEATURE REQUESTS, as I think of them.

1... INSTA-CHAT: In the Forums we can see when another user is online by the 'MSN' style of icon above their name as a post (at least that is my assumption).  Can we have a way to send an IM to them, or maybe even a separate chat window with their permission.

2... PRIVATE FORUM BY CATEGORY: Officers could discuss submissions, improvements and other related Category items without everyone else seeing it.  This would also cover the request from CHSTRESS53 for History of Officer Action, as links to submissions could be added.

3... PEER REVIEW TOOLS: As stated in another thread.  When a proposal reaches Peer Review, there could be a link that searches the tags used in the proposal against all other exisiting submissions to check for redundancy.  Sorted by most matches to fewest matches would make it a snap to see if there is excessive overlap.

4... GROUP CREATION TOOLS: Similar to #3, and stated in the old Forums.  This would occur BEFORE the actual creation of a Group.  To start making a new Group, the Leader-to-be would enter the up-to five TAGS and then the site would check them against existing Groups and Categories.  This could also be added for Officers to see if the Group they are joining has already been proposed, or something in the same idea.

Anyone else have ideas, or alterations to what I put in?

BQ

When you go to the gallery photos I like the preview option. In addition to this great feature I think it would be a nice if when you select an image in a gallery you could have the option to select the next photo in the gallery instead of needing to page back and then select the next photo in the series.

For example; if I am at the Gallery for my sit by me statue  waymark I can view several photos in the preview option. If I want to read the plaque in the photo I click on the first one I want to read and there it is but if I want to see the next one in the series I have to page back and select another one.

For a large gallery this is cumbersome.

(edited original because I couldn't get both my links to work and lost message in preview.)

Thought I would resurrect the features and functions topic.  I was thinking it might be neat to have something like a "usage" statistics page.  It could be a page showing generic waymarking statistics such as number of members, % with X number of waymarks, % with X number of finds.  It could even be broken out into more detail like % who have been members for a month, % members for 6 months, % members for 1 year, % members for greater than 1 year.  Similar stats could be done for number of waymarks and finds, such as % with 100 marks, with 1000 etc.

Stats could even be customized to show where you rank.  However, a negative of this could lead to people racing to up their percentile and contributing poor waymarks, but I would hope the peer review and approval process would keep this from happening.

Stats on number of groups, number of groups led, etc...  have fun with it, as the programmers know what stats they have access to better than I.  Someone should be able to set up queries for this, regardless of the database configuration at groundspeak.

I still see that job posting for ASP.NET programmers on the groundspeak page.  It seems impossible to believe that it hasn't been filled yet.

I had another thought... After voting on a few categories during their 3 day review period, I never heard about what happened to them.  Have they been approved?  Have they been rejected?  What were the reasons for rejection?  I was wondering if the only way a person not a member of the sponsoring group would know what happened is if the new category eventually appears in the new categories tab.  I was curious if others felt the same way, or how the votes turned out.

Then I wondered if it would be good to have a log of what categories were attempted/rejected and reasons for rejections.  It came up in my mind again when I read the "Road Warriors" thread about route 66 waymarking.  If someone hadn't pointed out it had been tried before, and found the thread about the previous attempt, would the new category be doomed to the old failures?

So, my suggestion is an area of the web site where you can see past categories that passed or failed and reasons why.  Can you imagine a year or two from now when the community has substantially grown, and every 6 months someone proposes the same category over and over again because they were unaware it had been proposed already and rejected?  Would the only key to figuring out if it happened already be a check of the msg boards, or premium members memories?  Seems like something that could be considered.

You know, that's a really good idea.  I've wondered the same thing.  And even if a new person does a search before getting started putting together a group/category, it doesn't mean the search will turn up anything.  I am usually less than successful when trying to search topics in the forums. 

Great ideas.
If my mind was only as bright.

It would be good to see the life and process' of the category.
Some of our premuim minds can't remember everything.

It might make the sterss level lower in the waiting "did it pass"?
Was it rejected?
Could I have edited it better?
Who does not like it.

I could go on but you all know those feelings trying to get things just right.
In the proper context as not to offend.
Cover all the bases....

I love the idea monkeykat.  That sure would help in the creation process and save alot of work.

I would love to see a list of category proposals that did not pass Peer Review.  Only to watch how things develop and we could all learn the process better.

Like in other things, I see three levels.  Lets say like a traffic light

Green - Passed and Active
Yellow - Under Construction
Red - Declined and Idle

The status could easily be updated based upon obvious items.  The only one that may not seem obvious, but really is, would be that if a proposal does not pass Peer Review that it instantly turns from Yellow to Red... and would return to Yellow if the Leader begins editing to move towards correcting the reasons that it failed.

Just another random though passing through my mind.

BQ

Have it your way, or change your perspective.

Nate et al--

Is there any way to view the waymarks in a category in chronological order of when they were *visited,* rather than when they were *created*? I'd like to be able to see which ones have been logged recently. I don't currently see that sort option. If I'm correct that it isn't there, would you consider adding it, please?


Thanks!
Patty

wintertime:

Nate et al--

Is there any way to view the waymarks in a category in chronological order of when they were *visited,* rather than when they were *created*? I'd like to be able to see which ones have been logged recently. I don't currently see that sort option. If I'm correct that it isn't there, would you consider adding it, please?


Thanks!
Patty

Sean is working on sorting for the next update, so I'll see if we can add this as an option there as well. Thanks for the suggestion, Patty.

opinionate:

Sean is working on sorting for the next update, so I'll see if we can add this as an option there as well. Thanks for the suggestion, Patty.

Thank you, Nate! Once a category has any appreciable number of waymarks in it, it's very time consuming to scroll through the whole list looking at the "last visited" dates. It would be wonderful to be able to sort by that criterion.


Patty