Daniel Spils
Seattle

43 Places News and Announcements

(in United States > Washington State > King County)

Worth visiting!

News: These are YOUR places  — 1 year ago

If you’re new to 43 Places you may not realize that all the places on this website have been added by users. Once upon a time, all we had were country names and a few major cities. 43 Places is a community effort where users are actively filling up the site with their favorite spots and the places they want to visit.

Along these lines all of us users can also correct and enhance data on 43 Places via the Report A Problem (RAP) tool. The RAP tool has been around for a short while, but users have already reported and closed over 14,000 problems.

What can you do with the RAP tool?
  • merge duplicate places
  • move a place in the heirarchy
  • correct a place name or mispelling
  • add an AKA (also known as) name to a place – NEW!
  • correct bad photos of a place (by correcting flickr tags)
  • report an “other” problem

The RAP tool is pretty slick—it allows you to search and correct place data on the spot.

How do you report a problem?
To report a problem click on the Report a problem link located at the bottom of every place page under “Help improve this page”.

Thanks for all the places you’ve added to date and thanks for keeping all the places you care about in good order.

Sep 26, 2006, 12:29PM PDT 29 cheers

Comments:

Kaz
University Of Southern Queensland

Question about the above feature

I have reported 4 genuine problems using this feature, of places I know well. Two of them were ammended as per my suggestion, and the status of these problems is now “closed”. Another one (Arnhem Land is in here twice, once as Arnhemland) now has the status “failed” and the problem still exists. The forth I have only just reported and it is too early for a response.

When I look at the main problems page, my reports appear as 4 reported, 0 resolved. Is that a bug?

Oct 01, 2006, 06:45PM PDT | Thread | Respond to this 3 cheers

Christopher
Peterborough

Not all users are allowed to ‘fix’ problems they have reported. I’m a big pest and report lots of things, and I’ve run into the same difficulty before. I don’t know if there’s an appeals process for problems that are just closed or listed as failed, but the 4 reported, 0 resolved thing just means you’ve reported 4 things and, since you don’t have the authority to, you haven’t fixed any.

Oct 01, 2006, 09:04PM PDT | Thread | Respond to this 2 cheers

Kaz
University Of Southern Queensland

I’m still a little confused sorry… when it’s written like that (4 reported 0 resolved) it makes it look like they’re still pending. Are you sure it means the above?

I don’t want to appeal anything… the two problems that are ‘closed’ were in fact ‘resolved’ as I had asked. Although I’m curious… if one comes up as “failed”, does it stay that way?

Oct 01, 2006, 09:15PM PDT | Thread | Respond to this 1 cheer

Christopher
Peterborough

Yes and yes, but Daniel is the one to talk to ask about that.

Oct 01, 2006, 10:07PM PDT | Thread | Respond to this 1 cheer

Daniel Spils
Seattle

Hi StacieAnne & Christopher:

Just got my laptop back from the repair shop today so I’m playing ketchup.

We’re having a little issue with problems “failing” due to stale object errors which is a fancy way of saying Todd’s got to figure that out before it all works seamlessly.

Actually, 4 “reported” problems is your point system. The approvers (I’m one) get points for “resolving”. So, you’re being correctly rewarded at this point for your much-appreciated activity. But I see what you mean—the wording is not exactly clear. I’ll talk with Todd about making the language clearer.

In summary, we’ll get the tool fixed so there aren’t so many failed tickets. That’s a high priority for us. Also, you’ve got 4 points! (we’ll work on making that make more sense).

Oct 02, 2006, 06:04PM PDT | Thread | Respond to this 6 cheers

Another question, please - Stacey is just cruising along
Helpers - Mary Hawkins
Thanks! - Stacey is just cruising along
Senza titolo - konsterlie

Emily
Houston

I’ve had several “wont fix” results when I tried to merge Louisiana cities into their parishes. I don’t know if you’re aware, but Louisiana doesn’t have counties, they have parishes.

Is there any way to appeal a “wont-fix” decision, or should I just try again, this time with more explanation?

Nov 01, 2006, 09:45PM PST | Thread | Respond to this

Mary Hawkins
New York City

Data Janitors...

I probably hit “Won’t Fix” on those.

If you look over on Data Janitors, there’s a discussion about sorting cities into counties, and we decided [and The Robots agreed] that it was hard for outsiders—tourists, not-quite locals—to find cities when they were sorted into counties or parishes, so we’re not going to let those through. You’re in Texas—do you know what county Little Rock, AR is in? What about Dallas or Atlanta? We aren’t undoing the ones that are already sorted, but the helpers are not supposed to approve problem reports that sort cities into counties.

If you disagree with someone’s decision on your problem report—we don’t know everything about places, and sometimes wikipedia and google are wrong—you can always re-submit it, explain why you really want this one and ask why it was ignored. Make sure that it’s not still sitting in the problems queue or the “to go” queue, but that way you might get a different helper or at least an explanation. I try to tell people why I rejected them, but I don’t always have time, and I imagine it’s the same for everyone else—we’re all either volunteers or robots, and I sneak over to the problems page when I have a moment…

Nov 05, 2006, 07:28AM PST | Thread | Respond to this 1 cheer

Emily
Houston

Ah! Last I heard, there was a big push to put cities in the correct counties/parishes. I didn’t know that had changed.

I joined Data Janitors so I can stay more in the loop. Thanks so much! :]

PS: All of you “fixers” are doing an AMAZING job by the way.

Nov 05, 2006, 07:41PM PST | Thread | Respond to this 1 cheer

(This comment was deleted.)

Nov 11, 2006, 09:05PM PST

Emily
Houston

This way to Data Janitors...

http://www.43places.com/groups/view/20

:]

Nov 12, 2006, 03:26AM PST | Thread | Respond to this 1 cheer

Senza titolo - Stacey is just cruising along
(This comment was deleted.)

Nov 22, 2006, 12:37AM PST

(This comment was deleted.)

Nov 22, 2006, 12:37AM PST

fidgiegirl
St. Paul

How do I see what the decision was?

How do I get to that page that tells you what the open problems are in the places I’ve been, but without reporting a problem? Does that make any sense?

Nov 26, 2006, 08:13PM PST | Thread | Respond to this

Daniel Spils
Seattle

43places.com/problems

You can just put a /problems at the end of the URL. Plainly put, go here:

http://43places.com/problems

Nov 27, 2006, 11:36AM PST | Respond to this

Kaz
University Of Southern Queensland

Won't Fix

I just got a “Won’t Fix” on a problem, and no comment was made to go with it. I found that really odd, as it was do do with putting a suburb of a major Australia city… in the right city. All the other All other Australian city suburbs are listed the way I suggested. Where do you make further comment about a “Won’t Fix” response?

Nov 27, 2006, 05:49PM PST | Thread | Respond to this

Daniel Spils
Seattle

Casuarina?

Hey Kaz—I just dug into this one. We’ve been hacking through a big backlog of problems as Todd’s been getting the tool working (which is great). I’m not sure why this one was wontfix’d.

Is Casuarina a suburb as in a separate city or town? Or is it actually part of Darwin. If the former, we can leave it under Northern Territory. If the latter, I can re-open the problem and get it moved lickety-split. I couldn’t find anything in wikipedia so I’ll rely on your local knowledge. Thanks!

Nov 30, 2006, 09:55AM PST | Thread | Respond to this

Kaz
University Of Southern Queensland

Casuarina

There might be a bit of a cultural difference here. Australians would never use the word “suburb” to refer to a city or town. A suburb would only ever be a relatively small section of a larger city or town. Maybe it’s different in the US?

But yeah, Casuarina is just a part of the city of Darwin like any other suburb there. Casurina gets more of a mention than other suburbs because it’s a northern suburb (has a beach), and because there is a shopping centre there.

I know the NT very well, and have been to Casuarina a lot… and it really should be listed under Darwin. There is one place listed under Darwin, however, that I am also going to report, and may cause some debate. Palmerston is not a suburb of Darwin, it really is a separate city. They do almost run onto each other though as both have expanded that far. But Palmerston is still a separete city and has it’s own city council.

Nov 30, 2006, 05:31PM PST | Respond to this

(This comment was deleted.)

Nov 29, 2006, 05:46PM PST

dirtyindiewear
Santa Fe

just curious

is there any intention to incorporate the “merge duplicate items” ability in allconsuming.com? because it would be really useful there.

i have no idea how integrated the two sites actually are.

anyhow. things are looking great from my point of view. bugs and all.

Jan 25, 2007, 08:31AM PST | Thread | Respond to this

Christopher
Peterborough

that totally makes sense!

You’re right, it’s kind of absurd that there are so many different editions of books on allconsuming and no way to merge them. I have a feeling it relates to the Amazon partnership, though.

Jan 28, 2007, 08:08PM PST | Respond to this

jeevs sinclair
La Paz

flickr ?

you mentioned flickr tags (specifically fixing them), is there a way to force or coax 43places into picking up certain tags on flickr for a certain place or is there a specific tagging protocol for places on flickr like the ‘machine tags’ upcoming.org and geotagging use ? It’s real nuisance having to upload photos to 43places (and waste your bandwidth when I already pay flickr for it) and have already uploaded (and even tagged) photos for a certain place.
Thanks

Feb 15, 2007, 08:19PM PST | Thread | Respond to this

jeevs sinclair
La Paz

sorry

http://ideas.43places.com/things/view/285402
looks like this has already been dealt with, although I agree it should be more clear and obvious. It would also be nice to force/manually import specific photos from flickr just like you would upload them.

Feb 15, 2007, 08:30PM PST | Respond to this


Daniel Spils has gotten 29 cheers on this entry.

 

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