Adding Photos to Places

Hi RMD

I have personally been inspired to visit many places, purely from the many great images that places show.

It is the poor and non related photos that do not do the place in database any justice.

Thanks for the reply.


Cheers


Stephen

Hi Ron

For me, the EO Places data collection play a very big part of my personal trip planning, and I know that David and Michelle have put a lot of time into getting where it is today, and is a credit to them.

When you see a photo of some carpet and some lounge, how can people relate that the the place it is intended to represent.


Thanks for the reply.


Cheers


Stephen

Hi Michelle

I looked at it last night, and it was still there when I posted the forum post.

If you could look into giving administrators more powers, it would save you a lot of time.

But you must agree, why would someone put a very poor photo of carpet and some lounge as a place.


Cheers


Stephen

I have been equally annoyed for some time Stephen, however there are 2 issues to note:

1. most times people make technical errors, it is not usually intentional

2. about a month ago I asked David to write me a log system so I could see the incoming photo updates as emails in a dedicated inbox - I have always had Place update alerts with text changes and a separate log for New Places created, so adding the new Photo alert is the final piece in my alert system. I check every single Place change alert - and I check/action them almost daily. When we were away, I came back and went through all the unread logs and completed that yesterday - a lot were mine. The volume is not high and easily manageable.

A key part of our evolution of managing increased user generated live content to the server is that I have also configured my phone access to these alert inboxes so that I can work even when I'm not at my desk just from my phone - which is frequent.

What I do value most is people who understand the site and see a problem taken a moment to use the tools provided to alert us - this ensures the alerts go to the inboxes that we are tracking - so that a review/resolution is done in the fastest possible way. It would be very rare for anything major to be unlooked at for longer than 24 hours. So my advice to others who like Stephen wish to help this situation, just drop us a polite note using the Place alert button to request we look at a particular issue. You'll find this button at the bottom of every Place page - there is also one on every Forum post.

The thing to understand is nothing is permanent on our site - a simple button click and its gone/fixed/sorted. Move on. No drama.

In terms of other issues with Places that may have occurred in the past - I have also addressed this going forward. By reviewing the New Place update logs, I had discovered a disappointing trend where people were creating New Places but changing the default save setting from Private to Public but these Places were incomplete, at wrong position etc. At the same time as I had asked David to create the New Photo email log alert, I also asked for a way to switch a Public Place back to Private when I felt a Place was not complete, or had too much private information (eg. Places named "Home", or personal photos). In the past I was only able to Delete these Places and sadly this was causing a trickle down effect if the person had already used this Place as a navigational waypoint in a Private Trek - it would corrupt the file but they wouldn't know why). So this has all been resolved - and its just another one of the alerts I manage and action.

Again, I can check/action all my phone or desktop and I check/action almost daily.

Content consistency is of upmost concern to us as a digital publishers. We've been doing this for 19 years now and have a pretty good handle on it. We're happy with our processes and feel this issue with the odd photo upload needing deletion is easily manageable in-house with our current systems. However, we most certainly may have missed a few in the past because with a database over 90,000 Places there are always going to be errors but they are all easily fixable if the error is identified. One thing I'm aware of is how many Places (even yours Stephen) created using handheld GPS devices from a years ago are now appearing to be in the incorrect location (just slightly). This is due to the slightly inaccurate GPS systems that consumer devices have had for some time - and the improvement made in EOTopo maps to road alignments using better GPS road alignment tools. So some Places now are slightly out (less than 300m). David has a task on his to-do list to investigate a global re positioning of these legacy data issues found in some older Place records. Going forward the GPS accuracies in our consumer devices has been improving dramatically in past year and another improvement just the other day.

Michelle, your website and its products are well done, and well supported, thank you for your obviously intensive efforts.

However, a website suggestion I would like to make (unrelated to photos and places), is that you appoint a few moderators who have the simple ability to delete spam posts, on the spot.

As websites are globally accessible, it seems the scammers in 3rd world locations on major time zone differences to Australia, seem to delight in posting particularly annoying spam posts, at a time when they know this websites owners and employees are asleep.

Having a few moderators spread around the globe, with the ability to delete spam, virtually the instant it appears, is the best way to rapidly discourage spammers, who get great satisfaction from seeing their posts still in place, hours, and even days later.

I'm a moderator on another totally unrelated forum, based in the U.S., and we had a lot of trouble with spammers a few years ago, until we took the step of appointing global moderators, one of whom is nearly always on the forum, to be able to delete spam almost instantly.

The spam problem has virtually disappeared since the spammers realise we are watching 24/7/365, and we won't tolerate their forum-ruining garbage for one second.

Cheers, Ron.

Hi Ron our moderators do have the delete option to action immediately and we have installed an auto system spamming delete function to detects spam before it is posted and stops it from appearing but some spam still gets through and our moderators dont check hourly. Would you like to be a moderator Ron?

Michelle, if you feel you could do with another moderator, I'd be happy to help out - but I am based in Perth, W.A., so perhaps I'd not be as useful as a moderator based elsewhere, such as on the East Coast, or in another country.

Cheers, Ron.