10 Mar
2012
10 Mar
'12
7:19 p.m.
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=hajdu…
http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/search.cgi?action=search&search=trichy
5) AOB.
Have I forgotten anything important?
Kake
10 Mar
10 Mar
9:01 p.m.
On Sat 10 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh <kake(a)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.
[...]
5) 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=local…
I am happy with this. Is everyone else happy with this?
Kake
11 Mar
11 Mar
8:05 a.m.
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=local…
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
4:51 p.m.
On Sun 11 Mar 2012, Stephen Gower <stephen.gower(a)wolfson.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
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
On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 09:01:22PM +0000, Kake L Pugh
wrote:
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
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. See for
example the map of the Cowley Road locale:
http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?action=index;format=map;index_type=local…
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.
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
12 Mar
12 Mar
9:11 a.m.
On Sun 11 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight <janetmck(a)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
11 Mar
11 Mar
4:31 p.m.
On Sat 10 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh <kake(a)earth.li> wrote:
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.
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. :)
5) 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
12 Mar
12 Mar
7:51 a.m.
On Sun 11 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight <janetmck(a)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
13 Mar
13 Mar
10:44 a.m.
On Mon 12 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh <kake(a)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
11:16 a.m.
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight <janetmck(a)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]
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
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?
3:21 p.m.
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh <kake(a)earth.li> wrote:
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.
Probably not. :-}
[Goth/Gay etc]
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight
<janetmck(a)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):
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/syndata.html#characters
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. 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? 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
5:27 p.m.
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight <janetmck(a)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):
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/syndata.html#characters
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
15 Mar
15 Mar
10:05 a.m.
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh <kake(a)earth.li> wrote:
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
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"?
10:23 a.m.
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh <kake(a)earth.li> wrote:
> Could call it just "Baby Changing"?
On Thu 15 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight <janetmck(a)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-template…
Kake
5:46 p.m.
On Thu 15 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh <kake(a)earth.li> wrote:
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
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-template…
16 Mar
16 Mar
12:29 p.m.
On Thu 15 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight <janetmck(a)chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
is all that needs doing really - move everything into the Baby
Changing category and then get rid of the other category.
I like "Cashback Available".
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. [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. 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
18 Mar
18 Mar
10:46 a.m.
On Fri 16 Mar 2012, Kake L Pugh <kake(a)earth.li> wrote:
Um, I could do it, but if anybody would like to volunteer to do it
*well*, that'd be lovely. :-}
Jx
[...] 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.
24 Mar
24 Mar
11:08 a.m.
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(a)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
25 Mar
25 Mar
10:10 a.m.
On Sat 24 Mar 2012, Kake <kake(a)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
26 Mar
26 Mar
6:25 p.m.
On Sun 25 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight <janetmck(a)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
27 Mar
27 Mar
11:06 a.m.
On Mon 26 Mar 2012, Kake <kake(a)earth.li> wrote:
Fair enough. :)
There must be others... at least I really hope there are others. :-}
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
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... 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.
4 Apr
4 Apr
2:24 p.m.
On Tue 27 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight <janetmck(a)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
3:22 p.m.
On Wed 04 Apr 2012, Kake <kake(a)earth.li> wrote:
On Tue 27 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight
<janetmck(a)chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
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
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
5 Apr
5 Apr
9:34 a.m.
On Wed 04 Apr 2012, Janet McKnight <janetmck(a)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
11:30 a.m.
On Thu 05 Apr 2012, Kake <kake(a)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
8 Apr
8 Apr
3:07 p.m.
On Thu 05 Apr 2012, Kake <kake(a)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(a)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
10 Apr
10 Apr
10:15 a.m.
On Sun 08 Apr 2012, Kake <kake(a)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
11 Apr
11 Apr
4:55 p.m.
On Tue 10 Apr 2012, Janet McKnight <janetmck(a)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
12 Apr
12 Apr
2:49 p.m.
On Wed 11 Apr 2012, Kake <kake(a)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
13 Apr
13 Apr
9:02 a.m.
On Wed 11 Apr 2012, Kake <kake(a)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(a)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
6 Apr
6 Apr
12:46 p.m.
On Thu, Apr 05, 2012 at 09:34:55AM +0100, Kake wrote:
On Wed 04 Apr 2012, Janet McKnight
<janetmck(a)chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
You are certainly welcome to run cron jobs on urchin - you can put
the results in your public_html presumably?
Cheers,
Dominic.
--
Dominic Hargreaves | http://www.larted.org.uk/~dom/
PGP key 5178E2A5 from the.earth.li (keyserver,web,email)
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.
8 Apr
8 Apr
2:36 p.m.
On Fri 06 Apr 2012, Dominic Hargreaves <dom(a)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
22 Mar
22 Mar
8:28 p.m.
On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 05:27:32PM +0000, Kake L Pugh wrote:
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight
<janetmck(a)chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
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>
--
Dominic Hargreaves | http://www.larted.org.uk/~dom/
PGP key 5178E2A5 from the.earth.li (keyserver,web,email)
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
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.
12 Apr
12 Apr
10:46 a.m.
I wrote:
> [Goth/Gay guides etc]
>> I think it's best done elsewhere.
On Tue 13 Mar 2012, Janet McKnight <janetmck(a)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(a)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
2:55 p.m.
On Thu 12 Apr 2012, Kake <kake(a)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
5:09 p.m.
Janet McKnight <janetmck(a)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
13 Apr
13 Apr
9:51 a.m.
Janet McKnight <janetmck(a)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(a)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
11:45 a.m.
On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 05:09:34PM +0100, Owen McKnight wrote:
Janet McKnight <janetmck(a)chiark.greenend.org.uk>
wrote:
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.
--
Dominic Hargreaves | http://www.larted.org.uk/~dom/
PGP key 5178E2A5 from the.earth.li (keyserver,web,email)
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?
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36 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
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Dominic Hargreaves -
Janet McKnight -
Kake -
Kake L Pugh
-
Owen McKnight -
Stephen Gower