On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 09:58:37AM +0100, Kake wrote:

Hello! On the train the other day I had some ideas about the way data input could work for a "last verified" field for OpenGuides. I drew a thing: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kake_pugh/7278918078/

This would result in three pieces of data, which will be stored if and only if the "re-confirm existence?" tickybox is ticked:

• the date on which the existence of the business described was last checked (it should be possible to give either a specific day or just the month)

• the method by which it was checked (free text, e.g. "phoned them up", but with a tickybox or two to make it easy to give standard reasons such as "went past and saw it open" - a tick in this box would be turned into text by the code before storing in the database)

• the person who checked it (not explicitly entered on the form, but taken from the username of the person performing the edit - see above, this only happens if they explicitly choose to "re-confirm existence")

Anyone got any thoughts on the above?

This looks excellent, thanks for this.

Regarding the backend, here is some previous discussion on the point: http://lists.openguides.org/pipermail/openguides-dev/2007-June/001872.html

Dom points out in that post that there are two ways of doing it:

• as Wiki::Toolkit metadata
• as a new field in the node/content tables

Advantages of doing it as metadata:

• No need to change Wiki::Toolkit databases in a way that is irrelevant to some wikis.
• The "method of checking" data is really OpenGuides-specific, so should go in the metadata table, and then it would be nice to have the "date of checking" in there as well. Also, the "person who checked" data needs to go somewhere (this isn't always the same as the "person who last edited"). Then again, we already have a small inconsistency in that "date last edited" and "person who last edited" are in different tables.

Advantages of doing it in the node/content tables:

• We can store it as a proper date type, which saves some fiddling around in terms of actually using the data.

Actually it strikes me that a third possibility would be to use plugins: https://metacpan.org/module/Wiki::Toolkit::Plugin

though the Wiki::Toolkit plugin system never really got fully developed, and this might be an overcomplicated way of doing it for little benefit.

Thoughts?

Hmm, no clear ones here, I'm afraid.

On Tue 29 May 2012, Kake kake@earth.li wrote:

Hello! On the train the other day I had some ideas about the way data input could work for a "last verified" field for OpenGuides. I drew a thing: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kake_pugh/7278918078/

This would result in three pieces of data, which will be stored if and only if the "re-confirm existence?" tickybox is ticked:

• the date on which the existence of the business described was last checked (it should be possible to give either a specific day or just the month)

• the method by which it was checked (free text, e.g. "phoned them up", but with a tickybox or two to make it easy to give standard reasons such as "went past and saw it open" - a tick in this box would be turned into text by the code before storing in the database)

• the person who checked it (not explicitly entered on the form, but taken from the username of the person performing the edit - see above, this only happens if they explicitly choose to "re-confirm existence")

Anyone got any thoughts on the above?

I don't have much to add but I think this is great! :-)

I'm assuming it will be mostly standard reasons, select from

* phoned them up * walked past & saw it * saw an email/blogpost/tweet/etc from them * ...other (free text)

I can't think of any other ways you could check the existence of a business, to be honest, but maybe I'm just unimaginative...

I wonder if we need to have some way of saying whether it was just the existence that was checked or whether other details (e.g. opening hours) were checked too... but that might get complicated.

Jx

On Thu 31 May 2012, David Cantrell david@cantrell.org.uk wrote:

the obvious ones missing from that list are "I went in and spent some money" and "I work there" :-)

Good point! Though in either case you would have had to walk by, sort of... ;) Perhaps a more general "I saw it with my own eyes" option would cover all these cases.

The London guide already has (in plain text, I think, not in DB fields) info on when opening times were checked and when it was last confirmed to still exist. eg ...

http://london.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?Balham_Bowls_Club,_SW12_8QX

which says (at the moment) "Last visited by DrHyde, March 2011. Opening hours taken from the Balham Bowls Club website, December 2011". I think there's value in this.

Definitely! And good to know the provenance as well as the last-updated time -- opening times from websites are useful but not 100% reliable (mind you opening times on the door etc aren't 100% either but probably closer!).

It has just (belatedly) occurred to me though -- if I copy the opening times of a business from its website, am I allowed to make that info available under a cc licence? Is it a fact rather than something that can be copyrighted? Yes, I know, I should know this stuff by now. :-/

Jx

On Thu 31 May 2012, Dominic Hargreaves dom@earth.li wrote:

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 12:30:39PM +0100, Janet McKnight wrote:

...

It has just (belatedly) occurred to me though -- if I copy the opening times of a business from its website, am I allowed to make that info available under a cc licence? Is it a fact rather than something that can be copyrighted? Yes, I know, I should know this stuff by now. :-/

Individual facts are not copyrightable. Collections of facts (databases) may be subject to database rights.

So is a list of opening times an individual fact (rather than a very small collection of facts)?

I'm not trying to split hairs, I'm interested to know how/where the line is drawn. Though it may be off-topic for this list so perhaps I should just shut up now.

Jx

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 10:50:24AM +0100, Janet McKnight wrote:

...

I'm assuming it will be mostly standard reasons, select from

• phoned them up
• walked past & saw it
• saw an email/blogpost/tweet/etc from them
• ...other (free text)

Yes - I think actually the third of those might be best put in the free text field, especially if the field accepted wiki-formatting, so you could then link to the blogpost/tweet.

On Thu 31 May 2012, David Cantrell david@cantrell.org.uk wrote:

the obvious ones missing from that list are "I went in and spent some money" and "I work there" :-)

I would like to have some kind of wording that subsumes these under the same heading as "walked past and saw it" - possibly "I was there in person" or something? I would like the wording to emphasise that you have to see the place _actually open_ for it to count as confirmation.

The London guide already has (in plain text, I think, not in DB fields) info on when opening times were checked and when it was last confirmed to still exist. eg ...

http://london.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?Balham_Bowls_Club,_SW12_8QX

which says (at the moment) "Last visited by DrHyde, March 2011. Opening hours taken from the Balham Bowls Club website, December 2011". I think there's value in this.

Yep, that's in plain text on RGL. It's in its own div, which allows programmatic manipulation (with a bit of screenscraping and fiddling).

I usually like to have the opening hours provenance attached to the opening hours, somehow, as well. My latest OpenGuides project (launching on 1 August!) has the provenance in the opening hours field, e.g. the metadata display looks like this:

Address: 104 Tamworth Road, CR0 1XX (map) (osm) (gmap) (streetview) Opening Hours: 6:30am-6pm Mon-Sun (taken from A-board opposite cafe, August 2011) Categories: British Food, Cafes, Eat-In Food Locales: Croydon, Tamworth Road

i.e. when I added that page, I typed "6:30am-6pm Mon-Sun (taken from A-board opposite cafe, August 2011)" in the "Opening hours" box on the edit form.

Kake