Before I forget, here is some of the stuff we discussed during my week in Oxford, regarding various aspects of the scope of the guide.
1) Geographical scope.
http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Scope_Of_The_Guide says:
"Obviously the guide should be about things to do within Oxford City. However, locations outside the City may be okay as long as they don't stray too far and don't belong better on another wiki. For example, we have articles on places in Kidlington, but Witney, Didcot or Aylesbury are probably too far away."
Janet has however suggested that Kidlington is also too far away, as is Abingdon, but Botley is certainly part of Oxford, so saying "nothing outside the ring road" doesn't really work. Owen has suggested the traditional "6 miles from Carfax" definition. Dom thinks it's a bit tricky because Abingdon is unlikely to ever have its own Open Guide, so where should a person write about/document Abingdon, if they happen to want to do so?
(Please correct me if I have wrongly paraphrased anyone there.)
2) Completism vs. selectivity.
Owen thinks (and I agree with him) that completism is the way to go, rather than trying to be selective on the grounds of e.g. notability. This means that the Guide should have an entry for every business within its geographical scope. These entries don't have to contain "reviews" (see next point) or a vast amount of text, but should give a brief yet comprehensive overview of what the business is/does.
Example: http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?William_Morris
3) Subjectivity vs. objectivity.
Related to the above, we've started splitting off subjective "review" content from the main pub/restaurant/etc pages into subpages of people's userpages.
Example: http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Arbat http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Kake/Reviews/Arbat
The idea is that we would encourage most people to write their reviews on Daily Info, or on their own blogs, and we will then link to the relevant Daily Info page or blog post. Regular contributors can be an exception to this, if they really don't want to host their reviews elsewhere[0], but in this case the reviews will always be under their userpage rather than on the main restaurant page.
[0] I fall into this category, so am somewhat biased on this question.
4) Things that have closed.
The plan that Janet and I hashed out between us is thus. When a business closes, we remove all its categories and locales, add it to the "Closed" category, and make it very clear on the page that the business is no longer in, er, business. When something else opens up on the same spot, it gets a new page of its own, which is linked from the old one, and which links to said old one in turn. The "summary" field for both pages is updated to mention the old/new occupant of the premises (the summary shows up in search results, so if someone searches for e.g. "Hajduczek" and Arbat comes up, there is text saying "Russian restaurant on Cowley Road, previously a Polish restaurant called Hajduczek." to explain it).
Examples: http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/search.cgi?action=search&search=hajduc... http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/search.cgi?action=search&search=trichy
5) AOB.
Have I forgotten anything important?
Kake
On Sat 10 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh kake@earth.li wrote:
Before I forget, here is some of the stuff we discussed during my week in Oxford, regarding various aspects of the scope of the guide. [...]
- AOB.
Have I forgotten anything important?
I had! I think I only discussed this with Dom, but I was pondering the road/street locales, e.g. Cowley Road.
At the moment, these have things in them that are not strictly on the road itself, e.g. the Magic Cafe is in the Iffley Road and Cowley Road locales, because there isn't really a name for the locale that lies between those roads. See for example the map of the Cowley Road locale: http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?action=index;format=map;index_type=locale...
I am happy with this. Is everyone else happy with this?
Kake
On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 09:01:22PM +0000, Kake L Pugh wrote:
I had! I think I only discussed this with Dom, but I was pondering the road/street locales, e.g. Cowley Road.
At the moment, these have things in them that are not strictly on the road itself, e.g. the Magic Cafe is in the Iffley Road and Cowley Road locales, because there isn't really a name for the locale that lies between those roads.
When you say "is in" do you mean you feel it should be? Because at the moment, it's only in the East Oxford locale, which is what I think is correct. I did a sketch of (what are effectively) locales when I was thinking of districts for OSM. http://walking-papers.org/scan-large.php?id=mkfsgn6c although it was only a "first draft".
For what it's worth, when it comes to Road Locales, I think Magdalen Road probably deserves a locale of its own these days, but I'd only use the road locale for something on the road itself, or within a couple of hundred metres of it. I'd find it hard if a group of people said they were meeting "in the Cowley Road area" and then discovered they'd gone to the Pegasus Theatre Cafe (at the Iffley Road end of Magdalen) - even more so if I were a student than now, when I know the area pretty well.
See for example the map of the Cowley Road locale: http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?action=index;format=map;index_type=locale...
Looking at this, I'd say Jahazi, the Inner Bookshop, Everest and Oxford Cycle Workshop are incorrectly tagged. The latter has moved location anyway - I'll try and get the correct geotags in soon unless someone beats me to it.
s
On Sun 11 Mar 2012, Stephen Gower stephen.gower@wolfson.ox.ac.uk wrote:
On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 09:01:22PM +0000, Kake L Pugh wrote:
At the moment, these have things in them that are not strictly on the road itself, e.g. the Magic Cafe is in the Iffley Road and Cowley Road locales, because there isn't really a name for the locale that lies between those roads.
When you say "is in" do you mean you feel it should be? Because at the moment, it's only in the East Oxford locale, which is what I think is correct.
I think "East Oxford" is a very big locale and, as such, not as useful on its own for the purposes of finding things near other things. I mean, I'd say George & Delila's and Templars Square were both in East Oxford (ie I think EOx is actually *bigger* than you've drawn it, though I do love your map!), but I reckon it'd probably take me about 45 minutes to walk from one to the other.
I like having street-specific locales for the streets with significant amounts of stuff on.
What I really want is some sort of hierarchy eg 'street locale', 'local district locale', 'area locale', 'postal locale'. (Needs work.) eg our local Co-op is in 'Iffley Road' (the road it's on) and also 'Donnington' (a local district) and also 'East Oxford' (a more widely-recognised & wider-reaching district) and also 'Oxford' (as opposed to Blackbird Leys or Botley or Kidlington or other things that you might include in the postal address before 'Oxford' even if they are sort of part of Oxford).
There is probably a proper vocabulary (or ontology!) for this sort of thing, but I thought I'd try inventing it from scratch instead. o_O
See for example the map of the Cowley Road locale: http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?action=index;format=map;index_type=locale...
Looking at this, I'd say Jahazi, the Inner Bookshop, Everest and Oxford Cycle Workshop are incorrectly tagged.
I'm really torn here. I do really want a word for 'bits between Cowley & Iffley Road', it's a clearly defined triangle with lots of weird stuff in it, it's much more specific than 'East Oxford' but putting it into either 'Cowley Road' or 'Iffley Road' is potentially confusing if it's right in the middle of that triangle.
Googling around a bit I find that the Oxford Mail has called it the 'magic triangle': http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/9485075.Jubilee____is_perfect_excuse_for_a_...
I really like this name for it & am going to start using this whenever possible whether or not we put it in the openguide! :D
The latter has moved location anyway
- I'll try and get the correct geotags in soon unless someone beats me to
it.
Oxford Cycle Workshop as such doesn't exist any more -- it ceased trading in Autumn of 2011: https://theocw.wordpress.com/
There is now: * Oxford Cycle Workshop Training (on Glanville Road[1]) * Cycle Oxford CC (which doesn't really have a location...?) * Oxford Mobile Cycle Repairs (what do we do about mobile things?)
and * Oxfork (which inhabits the building where OCW used to be)
[1] Gosh! The map linked from 'Glanville Road' here: http://www.ocwt.coop/training-centre/ actually shows the location of all sorts of other exciting bike-related stuff.
I will stop rambling now, yes. :-}
Jx
On Sun 11 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
Googling around a bit I find that the Oxford Mail has called it the 'magic triangle': http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/9485075.Jubilee____is_perfect_excuse_for_a_...
I really like this name for it & am going to start using this whenever possible whether or not we put it in the openguide! :D
I absolutely love this name. Can we adopt it, can we, can we?
Kake
On Sat 10 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh kake@earth.li wrote:
- Things that have closed.
The plan that Janet and I hashed out between us is thus. When a business closes, we remove all its categories and locales, add it to the "Closed" category, and make it very clear on the page that the business is no longer in, er, business.
NB I would actually be happier to leave things in their original categories, *iff* we could filter all searches etc on 'Closed' orthogonally to other searches. eg a search for 'Restaurants' should only include open restaurants by default, but it'd be nice to be able to toggle 'show closed stuff as well'. As we currently can't exclude stuff based on its closedness, taking it out of other categories seems the best way to exclude it. (Kake, I think you said we'd also be able to add something to the template and/or CSS to make it really clear that a thing is closed? The openguide has surprisingly good googlejuice & if someone lands on a page out of context I don't want them to be confused by it.
The "summary" field for both pages is updated to mention the old/new occupant of the premises
I'm assuming we use our judgement & common sense as to how many levels of "old occupant" we put in the summary...? Otherwise eg Wok & Roll would have to say "Chinese restaurant on Woodstock Road, formerly Wok 23, formerly Just Friends, formerly Friends" etc etc. :)
- AOB.
Have I forgotten anything important?
Not that I can think of, but can I tack some more stuff on the end? :)
A) Another question about scope occurred to me when I realised there were pages like these kicking around in the openguide:
http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Goths http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Gay
Leaving aside the fact that they're wildly out of date, are they within scope? I think there is such a thing as a 'gay pub' (or 'goth pub' for that matter) & it's useful to record that sort of information, but I feel that trying to provide a "guide to gay (or goth) life in Oxford" is very subjective & might be best done elsewhere. Not sure though...
There's a few other things I wanted to mention but I'd probably best split them out into other emails to make less cumbersome threads. :-}
Jx
On Sun 11 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
As we currently can't exclude stuff based on its closedness, taking it out of other categories seems the best way to exclude it.
Yep, this is the reason for taking out the categories and locales - sorry I forgot to mention that! Also, in the future if OpenGuides is enhanced to take note of the "Closed" category, I can write a script to go back and pull out the old categories/locales and add them back in.
(Kake, I think you said we'd also be able to add something to the template and/or CSS to make it really clear that a thing is closed?
Yep! The plan is to put CSS classes in one of the divs (probably the "content" one) for each category (and locale?) that the page is in. So for example the Jam Factory page would have something like:
<div id="content" class="cat:baby_changing_facilities cat:free_wifi cat:pubs cat:restaurants cat:wifi loc:park_end_street loc:west_central">
and then in your CSS you can style any of those classes individually. I will implement this in core OpenGuides unless someone points out a problem (I'm going to copy-paste this to the dev list).
I'm assuming we use our judgement & common sense as to how many levels of "old occupant" we put in the summary...? Otherwise eg Wok & Roll would have to say "Chinese restaurant on Woodstock Road, formerly Wok 23, formerly Just Friends, formerly Friends" etc etc. :)
Yep :) Though there's no reason why Wok & Roll _can't_ have all that in its summary! The summaries are only displayed in the search results, so they can be long if appropriate.
A) Another question about scope occurred to me when I realised there were pages like these kicking around in the openguide:
http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Goths http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Gay
Leaving aside the fact that they're wildly out of date, are they within scope? I think there is such a thing as a 'gay pub' (or 'goth pub' for that matter) & it's useful to record that sort of information, but I feel that trying to provide a "guide to gay (or goth) life in Oxford" is very subjective & might be best done elsewhere. Not sure though...
I think it's best done elsewhere.
Kake
On Mon 12 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh kake@earth.li wrote:
Yep! The plan is to put CSS classes in one of the divs (probably the "content" one) for each category (and locale?) that the page is in. So for example the Jam Factory page would have something like:
<div id="content" class="cat:baby_changing_facilities cat:free_wifi cat:pubs cat:restaurants cat:wifi loc:park_end_street loc:west_central">
and then in your CSS you can style any of those classes individually.
Looks good to me (my CSS is out-of-date -- I'm assuming classes with ':' in are generally understood by browsers?). Having these classes would also mean we could do something like having big clear icons for things that you might want to see at a glance eg 'has disabled access', 'has baby changing facilities', etc.
Aside: Owen has observed that there are two (or possibly more) different types of category: 'is X' (eg 'Cafes') and 'has X' (eg 'Baby Changing Facilities'). I briefly wondered whether it would make sense to name them accordingly, before realising that I was about two steps away from suggesting that any node+category should be parseable as subject+predicate+object & that if I did that you would probably have to kill me.
On the other hand, we could then differentiate between the use of 'Cafes' to mean 'is a cafe' (eg G&Ds) and 'has a cafe' (eg Waterstones). If we cared.
[Goth/Gay guides etc]
I think it's best done elsewhere.
Goodgood. Are you happy to delete them or should we wait & see if anybody else on here objects?
Jx
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
Looks good to me (my CSS is out-of-date -- I'm assuming classes with ':' in are generally understood by browsers?).
I was hoping someone would tell me if this isn't the case :) I'm now thinking though that actually it would probably be safer to use underscores instead, since colons do have special meaning in stylesheets.
Having these classes would also mean we could do something like having big clear icons for things that you might want to see at a glance eg 'has disabled access', 'has baby changing facilities', etc.
Yes!
Aside: Owen has observed that there are two (or possibly more) different types of category: 'is X' (eg 'Cafes') and 'has X' (eg 'Baby Changing Facilities').
Yep. On RGL, the former are plural ("Category Pubs") and the latter are singular ("Category Beer Garden"). This wasn't entirely on purpose, it's just the way things mostly turned out, so I decided to make it a deliberate policy (albeit an unstated one) for the sake of consistency.
On the other hand, we could then differentiate between the use of 'Cafes' to mean 'is a cafe' (eg G&Ds) and 'has a cafe' (eg Waterstones). If we cared.
I'm not sure we do care - does this distinction really matter in a practical sense?
[Goth/Gay guides etc]
I think it's best done elsewhere.
Goodgood. Are you happy to delete them or should we wait & see if anybody else on here objects?
Let's wait a bit and see if anyone else has an opinion. I have put a note in my diary to sort it out in a few weeks if it proves uncontroversial.
Kake
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh kake@earth.li wrote:
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
Looks good to me (my CSS is out-of-date -- I'm assuming classes with ':' in are generally understood by browsers?).
I was hoping someone would tell me if this isn't the case :) I'm now thinking though that actually it would probably be safer to use underscores instead, since colons do have special meaning in stylesheets.
I've looked it up & it appears you can't use colons unless you escape them out (which will get ugly):
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/syndata.html#characters
Aside: Owen has observed that there are two (or possibly more) different types of category: 'is X' (eg 'Cafes') and 'has X' (eg 'Baby Changing Facilities').
Yep. On RGL, the former are plural ("Category Pubs") and the latter are singular ("Category Beer Garden"). This wasn't entirely on purpose, it's just the way things mostly turned out, so I decided to make it a deliberate policy (albeit an unstated one) for the sake of consistency.
It seems like a good policy, but does this mean that we'd have to use "Baby Changing Facility" (singular) as it's a "has:" category not an "is:" category? That looks odd to me as the phrase usually appears in the plural.
On the other hand, we could then differentiate between the use of 'Cafes' to mean 'is a cafe' (eg G&Ds) and 'has a cafe' (eg Waterstones). If we cared.
I'm not sure we do care - does this distinction really matter in a practical sense?
Probably not. :-}
[Goth/Gay etc]
Let's wait a bit and see if anyone else has an opinion. I have put a note in my diary to sort it out in a few weeks if it proves uncontroversial.
That's very organised! Thank you. :-)
Jx
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
I've looked it up & it appears you can't use colons unless you escape them out (which will get ugly):
OK, thanks! I've made it work with underscores instead, and have committed this to svn as changeset #1311: http://dev.openguides.org/changeset/1311
The code is all in node.tt so if you want a preview of it on the Oxford Guide then Dom can put that in as a custom template for now. It does require an upgrade to version 2.24 of the Template Toolkit.
It seems like a good policy, but does this mean that we'd have to use "Baby Changing Facility" (singular) as it's a "has:" category not an "is:" category? That looks odd to me as the phrase usually appears in the plural.
Could call it just "Baby Changing"?
Kake
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh kake@earth.li wrote:
OK, thanks! I've made it work with underscores instead, and have committed this to svn as changeset #1311: http://dev.openguides.org/changeset/1311
Brill, thank you!
It seems like a good policy, but does this mean that we'd have to use "Baby Changing Facility" (singular) as it's a "has:" category not an "is:" category? That looks odd to me as the phrase usually appears in the plural.
Could call it just "Baby Changing"?
Oh yes, that would be more sensible, wouldn't it. :) I assume I can't change the name of a category myself...?
Also, I have broken your system again, I realise :( by adding 'No Card Payments' as a category, ie for shops etc which don't allow payment by card. Suggestions for a better name welcomed, but I wasn't happy with 'cash only' because some take cheque as well.
Relatedly, it would be ace if there was a way to pick from existing categories when creating/editing pages...
Jx
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh kake@earth.li wrote:
Could call it just "Baby Changing"?
On Thu 15 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
Oh yes, that would be more sensible, wouldn't it. :) I assume I can't change the name of a category myself...?
I still don't have access to the rename script (though I have asked Dom for access and presumably it will reach the top of his to-do pile at some point) so I can't rename the category page yet either - but we would have to edit the individual pages to change the category name anyway, so you can certainly do that.
We do in fact seem to already have a Baby Changing category! http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Category_Baby_Changing
so I think I would just move the stub blurb from Baby Changing Facilities to there, edit all the pages to change the category name, then delete Category Baby Changing Facilities.
Also, I have broken your system again, I realise :( by adding 'No Card Payments' as a category, ie for shops etc which don't allow payment by card. Suggestions for a better name welcomed, but I wasn't happy with 'cash only' because some take cheque as well.
I saw this category appear, and was wondering about it... is it something that's really useful to have as a category, rather than just mentioning it in the page text? I'm not sure I would ever want to search specifically for a business that doesn't take card payments. I would be more likely to want to do the opposite, in which case "Card Payments Accepted" would be a good category name. Ooh, and "Cashback" or "Cashback Available" or "Cashback Given" would be useful too.
Relatedly, it would be ace if there was a way to pick from existing categories when creating/editing pages...
On RGL and the Cambridge Guide, we have links to the lists of all categories and locales next to the relevant boxes on the edit form, e.g. http://cambridge.openguides.org/wiki/?action=edit;id=Punter
which can be done by editing the edit_form.tt template: http://svn.randomness.org.uk/trunk/london.randomness.org.uk/custom-templates...
Kake
On Thu 15 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh kake@earth.li wrote:
I still don't have access to the rename script (though I have asked Dom for access and presumably it will reach the top of his to-do pile at some point) so I can't rename the category page yet either - but we would have to edit the individual pages to change the category name anyway, so you can certainly do that.
Won't it be a bit misleading if I edit the page to show the new name but it's still at the old URL? (Or am I misunderstanding you?)
We do in fact seem to already have a Baby Changing category! http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Category_Baby_Changing
Oh, duh. OK. Will try to rationalise this & let you know when I have done.
[No Card Payments]
I saw this category appear, and was wondering about it... is it something that's really useful to have as a category, rather than just mentioning it in the page text? I'm not sure I would ever want to search specifically for a business that doesn't take card payments.
Hm, I was thinking less in terms of searching, more in terms of being able to add a big clear icon warning people. I take your point though, but...
I would be more likely to want to do the opposite, in which case "Card Payments Accepted" would be a good category name.
... I think this is basically the default now, even most of the tiny newsagents take cards, & it would be a real drag trying to add "Card Payments Accepted" category to everything for which it's applicable. I was starting to write a blog post about places in Oxford which don't accept cards (because I have the most exciting blog in the world, FACT) & can only come up with less than half a dozen (& one of them I think now *does* take cards but need to go and check).
Ooh, and "Cashback" or "Cashback Available" or "Cashback Given" would be useful too.
Ooh, yes, that *would* be good. Let me know which wording you prefer & I can start adding that for some of the places I know of.
Relatedly, it would be ace if there was a way to pick from existing categories when creating/editing pages...
On RGL and the Cambridge Guide, we have links to the lists of all categories and locales next to the relevant boxes on the edit form, e.g. http://cambridge.openguides.org/wiki/?action=edit;id=Punter
which can be done by editing the edit_form.tt template: http://svn.randomness.org.uk/trunk/london.randomness.org.uk/custom-templates...
So in fact we could even add one of those JS start-typing-to-autocomplete things (or would that be really irritating?) or script in a drop-down list? A link to the list would be a very good start though!
Thank you, & sorry if I seem to be just creating more work for you & not doing any of it myself... :-/
Jx
On Thu 15 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
Won't it be a bit misleading if I edit the page to show the new name but it's still at the old URL? (Or am I misunderstanding you?)
I think I was being confusing, because I only realised after I'd typed it all that we already had the Baby Changing category! So this:
We do in fact seem to already have a Baby Changing category! http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Category_Baby_Changing
Oh, duh. OK. Will try to rationalise this & let you know when I have done.
is all that needs doing really - move everything into the Baby Changing category and then get rid of the other category.
[No Card Payments] Hm, I was thinking less in terms of searching, more in terms of being able to add a big clear icon warning people.
Oh, I seeeeee, yes. I suppose "Card Payments Refused" would sound a little too confrontational.
Ooh, and "Cashback" or "Cashback Available" or "Cashback Given" would be useful too.
Ooh, yes, that *would* be good. Let me know which wording you prefer & I can start adding that for some of the places I know of.
I like "Cashback Available".
So in fact we could even add one of those JS start-typing-to-autocomplete things (or would that be really irritating?) or script in a drop-down list? A link to the list would be a very good start though!
I don't know enough JavaScript to be able to do this, but in theory I'm in favour of at least trying it - as long as someone else can do the coding part.
Kake
On Fri 16 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh kake@earth.li wrote:
[...] move everything into the Baby Changing category and then get rid of the other category.
It's times like this I really wish I had direct DB access. ;)
I like "Cashback Available".
OK, will do!
Another terminology question, while we're on the topic:
I added "Outside Seating" (which I now think should have been "Outdoor Seating") and as a result got into a debate with Owen about other types of outside seating. I think "Pub garden" is a useful category and distinct from "Outside seating". He thinks it's all the same thing but if we are going to distinguish between them then the Magdalen's outdoor seating counts as a garden (it's enclosed but it is all concrete). I think if I was looking for a pub with a pub garden I'd be a bit disappointed if it was all concrete. Am I asking too much? :-}
So in fact we could even add one of those JS start-typing-to-autocomplete things (or would that be really irritating?) or script in a drop-down list? A link to the list would be a very good start though!
I don't know enough JavaScript to be able to do this, but in theory I'm in favour of at least trying it - as long as someone else can do the coding part.
Um, I could do it, but if anybody would like to volunteer to do it *well*, that'd be lovely. :-}
Jx
Gah, another mis-sent mail! I _knew_ I'd replied to this, was just wondering why it didn't show up on the list. Sorry Janet for the duplicate.
On Sun 18 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
I added "Outside Seating" (which I now think should have been "Outdoor Seating") and as a result got into a debate with Owen about other types of outside seating. I think "Pub garden" is a useful category and distinct from "Outside seating". He thinks it's all the same thing but if we are going to distinguish between them then the Magdalen's outdoor seating counts as a garden (it's enclosed but it is all concrete). I think if I was looking for a pub with a pub garden I'd be a bit disappointed if it was all concrete. Am I asking too much? :-}
I have had similar thoughts re the "Beer Garden" category on RGL. I think it's a bit of a subjective thing, which is unusual as OpenGuides categories tend to be objective. For example, someone wanted to add a "Good Jukebox" category to RGL but I said no :) Then again, we do have "Vegan Friendly", which _could_ be objective (e.g. we could make rules about how many vegan dishes must be on the menu), but in practice is subjective.
I think outside seating and beer gardens are different things, though the latter is a subset of the former. Outside seating could be a couple of benches out on the street, which you might sit at if there was no room inside or you were all smokers. I don't think I'd call a space a "beer garden" unless it had grass or plants or something. I mean, if there's nothing growing there, how is it a garden?
(The above was what I intended to send to the list last weekend, the below is new.)
I see we now have a Category Post Offices, the phrasing of which I like. Is Category Postal Services now redundant?
Kake
On Sat 24 Mar 2012, Kake kake@earth.li wrote:
I think outside seating and beer gardens are different things, though the latter is a subset of the former. Outside seating could be a couple of benches out on the street, which you might sit at if there was no room inside or you were all smokers. I don't think I'd call a space a "beer garden" unless it had grass or plants or something. I mean, if there's nothing growing there, how is it a garden?
I agree with this post!
So I'll stick with 'outside seating' but add 'beer garden' for pubs which have a proper garden?
Still unsure what to do about the Magdalen Arms, which has tables for eating outside, in a fenced-off (non-smoking) area, with pot plants and stuff, but it is definitely paved rather than garden-ish.
Maybe 'outside non-smoking area' is another category. (The Turf has one of those as well.) I seem to just keep proliferating categories without actually adding anything useful, though. :-/
I see we now have a Category Post Offices, the phrasing of which I like. Is Category Postal Services now redundant?
The only thing in Postal Services that isn't a post office is Iffley Community Shop, which collects letters & packages for posting but isn't a post office.
Other things I can think of which might count as 'postal services' without being a post office are:
* other parcel/courier services eg Ryman now does DHL (& so does somewhere else -- WHSmith maybe? -- but I can't remember where)
* post office depots ie places where your parcel will go to die if you're not in when it's delivered, but you can't actually send post from them (this is crazy, I know, but that's what we have with the depot in Blackbird Leys).
So I don't think it's an entirely useless category (I think there's a set of things that I would expect a Post Office to include over and above sending stuff through the post, which these places don't include) but it may not be very clear (though we can & probably should add scope notes when we come to these decisions).
I'm not sure if Post Offices need to have Postal Services as a category too (because I'm still not sure where I stand on subset categories, or rather I want them to be automated eg anything which gets category Post Offices automatically gets Postal Services, but I know we can't do that now!).
Does that make sense? I am having trouble converting these interesting discussions into actual actions... :-}
Jx
On Sun 25 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
So I'll stick with 'outside seating' but add 'beer garden' for pubs which have a proper garden?
Sounds like a plan!
Still unsure what to do about the Magdalen Arms, which has tables for eating outside, in a fenced-off (non-smoking) area, with pot plants and stuff, but it is definitely paved rather than garden-ish.
I reckon the pot plants make it a garden.
Maybe 'outside non-smoking area' is another category. (The Turf has one of those as well.)
I would be interested in seeking out places in such a category! So I think it's a good one, unless it really is just the Magdalen Arms and the Turf...
Other things I can think of which might count as 'postal services' without being a post office are: [snip list] [...] So I don't think it's an entirely useless category (I think there's a set of things that I would expect a Post Office to include over and above sending stuff through the post, which these places don't include) but it may not be very clear (though we can & probably should add scope notes when we come to these decisions).
Oh, I seeeee, yes. We can add notes on the category pages, to tell people what belongs in each category.
I'm not sure if Post Offices need to have Postal Services as a category too [...]
I think they do at the moment, since we can't do automatic subcatgorisation yet, and it is useful to be able to get a map of all places with postal services.
Kake
On Mon 26 Mar 2012, Kake kake@earth.li wrote:
Still unsure what to do about the Magdalen Arms, which has tables for eating outside, in a fenced-off (non-smoking) area, with pot plants and stuff, but it is definitely paved rather than garden-ish.
I reckon the pot plants make it a garden.
Fair enough. :)
Maybe 'outside non-smoking area' is another category. (The Turf has one of those as well.)
I would be interested in seeking out places in such a category! So I think it's a good one, unless it really is just the Magdalen Arms and the Turf...
There must be others... at least I really hope there are others. :-}
I'm not sure if Post Offices need to have Postal Services as a category too [...]
I think they do at the moment, since we can't do automatic subcatgorisation yet, and it is useful to be able to get a map of all places with postal services.
Righto. Would it be possible to run some sort of script to automatically add the extra superset categories where there is a pure subset (rather than relying on people remembering to do it manually)? Or am I just being lazy? ;)
Jx
On Tue 27 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
Would it be possible to run some sort of script to automatically add the extra superset categories where there is a pure subset (rather than relying on people remembering to do it manually)?
I've written a command line script to check this manually, but it does require me to have a list of the supersets and subsets. I experimented with a version that would automatically look for categories that were members of other categories, but it was very very slow due to needing lots of separate database accesses. So for now the list needs to be manually created. The script produces output like this:
CATEGORIES: Things in Post Offices but not in Postal Services: nothing! Things in Wetherspoons Pubs but not in Pubs: nothing! Things in Colleges but not in The University: St. Catherine's College
LOCALES: Things in Broad Street but not in Central: nothing! Things in Carfax but not in Central: nothing! Things in Cornmarket but not in Central: nothing! Things in George Street but not in Central: nothing! Things in High Street but not in Central: nothing! Things in Merton Street but not in Central: nothing! Things in Turl Street but not in Central: nothing!
Does that look useful? If so then perhaps Dom would be OK with me running it as a (nightly?) cron job and having the output go to somewhere world-visible? The script is subsets.pl in my home directory on urchin.
Kake
On Wed 04 Apr 2012, Kake kake@earth.li wrote:
On Tue 27 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
Would it be possible to run some sort of script to automatically add the extra superset categories where there is a pure subset (rather than relying on people remembering to do it manually)?
I've written a command line script to check this manually, but it does require me to have a list of the supersets and subsets. I experimented with a version that would automatically look for categories that were members of other categories, but it was very very slow due to needing lots of separate database accesses. So for now the list needs to be manually created. The script produces output like this:
CATEGORIES: Things in Post Offices but not in Postal Services: nothing! Things in Wetherspoons Pubs but not in Pubs: nothing! Things in Colleges but not in The University: St. Catherine's College
This looks very useful to me! Thank you! (& I see you've fixed St Catz :-)
I'm not 100% clear whether your script is just checking or actually adding the extra category/locale itself. If the former, it might be even usefuller if the output was a link to editing the page so you could just click & go straight to it & add the category/locale, but now I am just being picky. :)
Could the list of subset categories/locales that it uses be somewhere readable & editable by e.g. me? Could it even be e.g. a moderated page on the openguide?
Now the wrangling about what counts as 'Central' can begin... :-}
Jx
On Wed 04 Apr 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
This looks very useful to me! Thank you! (& I see you've fixed St Catz :-)
Ha, actually, I haven't, it's just we have two of them: http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?St_Catherine%27s_College http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?St._Catherine%27s_College
In fact we have two of lots of the "Saint" colleges, oh dear. I think this is probably due to our OxPoints import - I somehow didn't notice that the convention was to put a dot in (possibly I didn't notice this _because_ Catz wasn't in the list of Colleges).
I'm not 100% clear whether your script is just checking or actually adding the extra category/locale itself. If the former, it might be even usefuller if the output was a link to editing the page so you could just click & go straight to it & add the category/locale, but now I am just being picky. :)
It's just checking it, and at the moment it just outputs plain text. If Dom is happy for us to do the cron job thing, then I can make it output HTML with links.
Could the list of subset categories/locales that it uses be somewhere readable & editable by e.g. me? Could it even be e.g. a moderated page on the openguide?
I've changed the output now to make the list visible:
---------------------------------------------------------------------- CATEGORIES: Things should be in Postal Services if they're in: Post Offices. Things should be in Pubs if they're in: Wetherspoons Pubs. Things should be in The University if they're in: Colleges.
Things in Colleges but not in The University: St. Catherine's College
LOCALES: Things should be in Central if they're in: Broad Street, Carfax, Cornmarket, George Street, High Street, Merton Street, Turl Street. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
but I think making it user-editable is more complicated than we need at the moment.
Kake
On Thu 05 Apr 2012, Kake kake@earth.li wrote:
In fact we have two of lots of the "Saint" colleges, oh dear. I think this is probably due to our OxPoints import - I somehow didn't notice that the convention was to put a dot in (possibly I didn't notice this _because_ Catz wasn't in the list of Colleges).
Oh bother, sorry, I should have picked that up too. Can you delete the undotted ones?
It's just checking it, and at the moment it just outputs plain text. If Dom is happy for us to do the cron job thing, then I can make it output HTML with links.
That would be fab. Thank you! :-)
I've changed the output now to make the list visible:
CATEGORIES: Things should be in Postal Services if they're in: Post Offices. Things should be in Pubs if they're in: Wetherspoons Pubs. Things should be in The University if they're in: Colleges.
Things in Colleges but not in The University: St. Catherine's College
LOCALES: Things should be in Central if they're in: Broad Street, Carfax, Cornmarket, George Street, High Street, Merton Street, Turl Street.
but I think making it user-editable is more complicated than we need at the moment.
Fairy nuff. I am very grateful (& impressed) that you have done all this at all & I'm sorry if I just seem to be asking for more features all the time!
Now to think about other subsets. I have a few noted on my notes page:
* 'Internet Access' is probably a superset of 'Internet Cafes', 'Wifi', 'Free Wifi' and possibly some other things I haven't thought of.
* 'Oriental Food' would presumably include 'Chinese Food', 'Thai Food' etc... though I think you said we might just get rid of it as it was a bit of an awkward term to use.
* I've noted some burblings about 'Coffee Shops' and 'Cafes', but actually now I think there's a place for both: if the former means places that sell coffee grounds/beans/etc to take away and make at home (a coffee off-licence!), then they're two overlapping categories (eg Whittards or Cardews would be a Coffee Shop but not a Cafe; Greens or G&Ds would be a Cafe but not a Coffee Shop; and Starbucks would be both as they sell their coffee grounds etc). I do think this is a bit confusing though.
Enough wittering from me, sorry! How do you want category/locale subsets submitted to you in the future? I may think of others.
Jx
On Thu 05 Apr 2012, Kake kake@earth.li wrote:
In fact we have two of lots of the "Saint" colleges, oh dear. I think this is probably due to our OxPoints import - I somehow didn't notice that the convention was to put a dot in (possibly I didn't notice this _because_ Catz wasn't in the list of Colleges).
On Thu 05 Apr 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
Oh bother, sorry, I should have picked that up too. Can you delete the undotted ones?
Done! While checking that this hadn't left any orphaned links, I realised that Templeton College should probably now be Green Templeton College: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Templeton_College,_Oxford
- 'Internet Access' is probably a superset of 'Internet Cafes',
'Wifi', 'Free Wifi' and possibly some other things I haven't thought of.
Added those three to my script.
- 'Oriental Food' would presumably include 'Chinese Food',
'Thai Food' etc... though I think you said we might just get rid of it as it was a bit of an awkward term to use.
It's a really weird and old-fashioned term, and I actually have no idea what it means (e.g. is Japanese food "Oriental"? Is Malaysian food "Oriental"? What about Xinjiang food? I bet different people would give different answers to those questions.)
- I've noted some burblings about 'Coffee Shops' and 'Cafes', but
actually now I think there's a place for both: if the former means places that sell coffee grounds/beans/etc to take away and make at home (a coffee off-licence!), then they're two overlapping categories [...]
On RGL we have "Coffee Shops" for places that you would go to to drink coffee, and "Coffee Merchants" for places that you would go to to buy coffee beans. "Cafes" might serve coffee, but if they only have Nescafe instant, they're not coffee shops.
How do you want category/locale subsets submitted to you in the future? I may think of others.
Email is best, either to me or to the list.
Kake
On Sun 08 Apr 2012, Kake kake@earth.li wrote:
I realised that Templeton College should probably now be Green Templeton College: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Templeton_College,_Oxford
Yes indeed. I thought Green Templeton should have been in that list from oxpoints...? If it wasn't, I'm sorry!
Also, Greyfriars is no longer a College/PPH (but since there wasn't a page for it, just a link from [[Permanent Private Hall]]*, this isn't a problem).
* which should probably be deleted anyway, along with other stuff that's covered by Wikipedia...
Heh, just found this: http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Visit_Every_College_In_A_Single_Day
We (for some values of 'we' - a bunch of runners from OUCS) actually ran to every college for Red Nose Day (& to publicise our geolocation project) a few years ago. Here's our route:
http://erewhon.oucs.ox.ac.uk/rednose/route.xml
I might add a link, if it's not too much like self-promotion. :-}
['Oriental Food']
It's a really weird and old-fashioned term, and I actually have no idea what it means (e.g. is Japanese food "Oriental"? Is Malaysian food "Oriental"? What about Xinjiang food? I bet different people would give different answers to those questions.)
I'd've said yes to all of those but only because I have a vague idea that 'Oriental' is anything 'a bit Chinesey or Japanesey'.
Oxford University still has an 'Oriental Institute': http://www.orinst.ox.ac.uk/
But I think if the term isn't useful and/or is going to cause lots of potentially-offensive argument about what 'counts', then we should just bin it. I don't think anybody will miss it!
On RGL we have "Coffee Shops" for places that you would go to to drink coffee, and "Coffee Merchants" for places that you would go to to buy coffee beans. "Cafes" might serve coffee, but if they only have Nescafe instant, they're not coffee shops.
Hm, OK, that's a subtle distinction. (And you might go to a greasy spoon* to drink coffee if you're not fussy about your coffee & just want something warm, brown & caffeinated!) I think it makes sense though so I will try to stick to it...
* which is not a category, but a search for it finds three of the four I can think of in Oxford. Hmm.
Jx
On Tue 10 Apr 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
Yes indeed. I thought Green Templeton should have been in that list from oxpoints...? If it wasn't, I'm sorry!
Ah-ha, it was, and so it has a page: http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Green_Templeton_College
What should we do about the Templeton College page? Just turn it into a redirect to Green Templeton College?
Hm, OK, that's a subtle distinction. (And you might go to a greasy spoon* to drink coffee if you're not fussy about your coffee & just want something warm, brown & caffeinated!) I think it makes sense though so I will try to stick to it...
- which is not a category, but a search for it finds three of the
four I can think of in Oxford. Hmm.
I think it could be a category! It is on RGL.
Kake
On Wed 11 Apr 2012, Kake kake@earth.li wrote:
What should we do about the Templeton College page? Just turn it into a redirect to Green Templeton College?
Hmmm. Isn't it just like any other thing that's closed? So we'd leave it there but give it Category:Closed & link to the new thing?
I think it's slightly more than just a name change, I mean. It's two colleges merging (we just didn't have a page for Green College before).
[Greasy Spoons]
I think it could be a category! It is on RGL.
:) OK, will add it if I remember...
Jx
On Wed 11 Apr 2012, Kake kake@earth.li wrote:
What should we do about the Templeton College page? Just turn it into a redirect to Green Templeton College?
On Thu 12 Apr 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
Hmmm. Isn't it just like any other thing that's closed? So we'd leave it there but give it Category:Closed & link to the new thing?
Agreed - done!
Kake
On Thu, Apr 05, 2012 at 09:34:55AM +0100, Kake wrote:
On Wed 04 Apr 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
This looks very useful to me! Thank you! (& I see you've fixed St Catz :-)
Ha, actually, I haven't, it's just we have two of them: http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?St_Catherine%27s_College http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?St._Catherine%27s_College
In fact we have two of lots of the "Saint" colleges, oh dear. I think this is probably due to our OxPoints import - I somehow didn't notice that the convention was to put a dot in (possibly I didn't notice this _because_ Catz wasn't in the list of Colleges).
I'm not 100% clear whether your script is just checking or actually adding the extra category/locale itself. If the former, it might be even usefuller if the output was a link to editing the page so you could just click & go straight to it & add the category/locale, but now I am just being picky. :)
It's just checking it, and at the moment it just outputs plain text. If Dom is happy for us to do the cron job thing, then I can make it output HTML with links.
You are certainly welcome to run cron jobs on urchin - you can put the results in your public_html presumably?
Cheers, Dominic.
On Fri 06 Apr 2012, Dominic Hargreaves dom@earth.li wrote:
You are certainly welcome to run cron jobs on urchin - you can put the results in your public_html presumably?
Great, thank you! I have two set up now, to generate the following pages: http://urchin.earth.li/~kake/oxford-guide/subsets.html http://urchin.earth.li/~kake/oxford-guide/no-geodata.html
The first of these is as discussed on this thread, with added links. The other is a temporary thing to show pages with missing geodata - this will be superseded by http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?action=show_missing_metadata once the next OpenGuides release is made live on urchin.
Cron jobs to create these run once a night at 3:12am and 3:23am respectively.
Kake
On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 05:27:32PM +0000, Kake L Pugh wrote:
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
I've looked it up & it appears you can't use colons unless you escape them out (which will get ugly):
OK, thanks! I've made it work with underscores instead, and have committed this to svn as changeset #1311: http://dev.openguides.org/changeset/1311
The code is all in node.tt so if you want a preview of it on the Oxford Guide then Dom can put that in as a custom template for now. It does require an upgrade to version 2.24 of the Template Toolkit.
That's not even hit Debian unstable yet (see[1]) so it's probably not going to appear on the Oxford Guide very soon, but it's on my radar (as is rolling a new release of OpenGuides with your other changes - thanks!)
Cheers, Dominic.
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/664561
I wrote:
[Goth/Gay guides etc]
I think it's best done elsewhere.
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
Goodgood. Are you happy to delete them or should we wait & see if anybody else on here objects?
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh kake@earth.li wrote:
Let's wait a bit and see if anyone else has an opinion. I have put a note in my diary to sort it out in a few weeks if it proves uncontroversial.
I have now done this, i.e. deleted the "Goths" and "Gay" pages.
Kake
On Thu 12 Apr 2012, Kake kake@earth.li wrote:
I have now done this, i.e. deleted the "Goths" and "Gay" pages.
Brill, thanks!
Relatedly, I can't remember if I've already raised this on the list, but in case not, I'm doing it now:
There are lots of pages about the City and the University about non-geo-locateable things which are probably adequately covered by Wikipedia, e.g.:
http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Oxford_University http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Chancellor http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Convocation http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Professor_Of_Poetry http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Oxford_Martyrs http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Civil_War
I feel really mean saying "this stuff should go!" when someone has put lots of effort into it, but I think it's not really sensibly within scope (& there are better places for it).
What does everybody else think?
Also, the page about Oxford University says it's taken from the University website, so surely not CC!
Jx
Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
There are lots of pages about the City and the University about non-geo-locateable things which are probably adequately covered by Wikipedia, e.g.:
http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Oxford_University http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Chancellor http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Convocation http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Professor_Of_Poetry http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Oxford_Martyrs http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Civil_War
I feel really mean saying "this stuff should go!" when someone has put lots of effort into it, but I think it's not really sensibly within scope (& there are better places for it).
I'm happy for all of that to go, precisely because Wikipedia covers it all far better than the Open Guide ever will. I think they're all arguably within scope, but our efforts would be better concentrated on content that isn't available elsewhere, much of which Wikipedia would consider too trivial to be notable. Shops, venues, parks, schools...
Question: Is there anything appropriate for the Open Guide that doesn't have a geographical location?
Owen
Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
There are lots of pages about the City and the University about non-geo-locateable things which are probably adequately covered by Wikipedia, e.g.: [snip list]
On Thu 12 Apr 2012, Owen McKnight owen.mcknight@gmail.com wrote:
I'm happy for all of that to go, precisely because Wikipedia covers it all far better than the Open Guide ever will. I think they're all arguably within scope, but our efforts would be better concentrated on content that isn't available elsewhere, much of which Wikipedia would consider too trivial to be notable. Shops, venues, parks, schools...
I agree!
Question: Is there anything appropriate for the Open Guide that doesn't have a geographical location?
I'm not sure I can think of anything on RGL that doesn't have a geographical location (aside from pages about RGL itself). But then RGL is not a completists' guide. The Oxford Guide does have this: http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Category_Societies but then again that might be better off subsumed into GroupsNearYou, if that's still going.
I think the strengths of OpenGuides are its categorisation and mapping systems, so it could potentially be used to store any local information that's easiest to find when it's categorised and/or geolocated - assuming someone else isn't already storing it and making it available in an appropriate way.
[warning, sidetrack approaching]
I did once consider making an OpenGuide that would just store links to blog reviews of London restaurants, since there's nowhere that aggregates these sensibly - UrbanSpoon is the closest thing, but is systematically incomplete (they won't link to you unless you display their widget, and not everyone wants to do that), their categories are very coarse (you can only search for African food, not Nigerian food), and their list of locales (like their list of categories) is laid down from above rather than growing out of how people living in London see their city. I didn't pursue this project mainly because it would have been a lot of work and I found a better way that would work for me (though not for others, since it partly relies on grep and a text file).
Kake
On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 05:09:34PM +0100, Owen McKnight wrote:
Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
There are lots of pages about the City and the University about non-geo-locateable things which are probably adequately covered by Wikipedia, e.g.:
http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Oxford_University http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Chancellor http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Convocation http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Professor_Of_Poetry http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Oxford_Martyrs http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Civil_War
I feel really mean saying "this stuff should go!" when someone has put lots of effort into it, but I think it's not really sensibly within scope (& there are better places for it).
I'm happy for all of that to go, precisely because Wikipedia covers it all far better than the Open Guide ever will. I think they're all arguably within scope, but our efforts would be better concentrated on content that isn't available elsewhere, much of which Wikipedia would consider too trivial to be notable. Shops, venues, parks, schools...
Question: Is there anything appropriate for the Open Guide that doesn't have a geographical location?
I would rather not strip the Oxford Guide of non-geotagged content. It's true that wikipedia may cover some subjects in more detail, or better, than we are, but there's room for both.
openguides-oxford@lists.openguides.org
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Kake -
Kake L Pugh
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Owen McKnight -
Stephen Gower