Category talk:Active graticules

Subcategory help

I'm a MediaWiki novice - I've read the help, but can't figure this one out. I'd like to see subcategories appear on this page, in a similar way to Category:North America or Category:Europe. I'm thinking the heirarchy goes

• Active or Inactive
• Continent
• Country/State/Province/etc.

I *think* the way to do this is by listing Active/Inactive first in the category list - which means reediting about 100 pages, but my tests have thus far proved inconclusive. Anyone know? --Thomcat 11 June

I might have an answer - going to try something... AshleyMorton 14:36, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Yup, there we go. Just add [[Category:Active Graticules]] to, for example, the [[Category:North America]] page, and there we go. Now, that's not really a sub-category, because it just includes the entire NA list as a link, basically. However, it may be what you're looking for. If you actually want a subcategory (North American Active Graticules), then I think you're going to have to actually create a new category for it. AshleyMorton 14:39, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not a wiki expert, but I think you'll have a problem here. The reason the subcategories are on the NA page is that the state categories are a part of the NA category ie

• North America
  • Alabama
    • Pensacola (currently active)
    • Huntsville (currently inactive)

Putting North America under Active Graticules implies _everything_ in North America is active, which isn't right. To fix it involves either (a)setting up two seperate hierachies (for every continent and state/country) like

• Active
  • North America Active
    • Alabama Active
      • Pensacola
• Inactive
  • North America Inactive
    • Alabama Inactive
      • Huntsville (currently inactive)

or (b) put everything under the Active Graticules category and make sure that noone puts an inactive graticule into any categories until it becomes active. (a) is a lot of work to set up and to maintain (you have to change 3 tags when a graticule becomes active). (b) isn't really enforceable or desirable because you'd want to categorise the graticule into its continent,state/country when it was being set up, even if it was inactive Nzsteak 15:37, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks all, will probably leave the Active/Inactive as place name lists then. I think the more frequently used category will be Inactive, but I can't see people visiting either page to try and find a place.

Active/Inactive Definition

What defines an active graticule? At least one person claiming it as a home graticule? Anyone ever attempting a geohash in it? Virginity taken? At least three expeditions? At least one expedition in the last 30 days? I have half a mind to reclassify Edmonton, Alberta as Inactive, as they haven't done anything in months. Is Slave Lake, Alberta active because I visited it for a month? -- Robin

• As of this weekend, a lot of formerly active grats are being recategorized as inactive. Graticules are "deactivated" if no one attempts a geohash, or if no new people join (i.e., add their name to the grat page) for a period of about 6 months. Some specific issues are that activity simply tailed off in the Northern Hemisphere after August, while the Southern Hemisphere hasn't. I'd imagine it's difficult to justify recategorizing when geohashing is a warm-weather sport, but a lot of pages were created by a single user who attempted/reached one geohash, then lost interest when they saw they were the only one. Ask Ekorren and others for specifics/progress. -- Jevanyn

Fair enough. It's rough geohashing in the northern hemisphere in the winter, but we'll be back stronger in the spring. Have you considered a different category for never-active versus formerly active graticules? -Robyn 19:04, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

We had talked a bit about that on the IRC during the last few days, and noone seemed to object against a 6 months timeline. I currently usually reclassify a graticule from active to inactive if there was

• no expedition in 6 months, and
• no significant wiki edits (planning, adding of names of local users, commenting) in 6 months

This affects graticules where never anyone did become active and a large number of mostly USA graticules where the activity simply vanished after may to july 2008. As in most of these graticules already july and august were inactive months, the explanation of geohashing being a summer sports doesn't really hold. These seem to be groups which formed in the beginning but didn't continue at all.

The idea of different categories for never-active and no-more-active didn't cross our mind yet, though. --Ekorren 19:10, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Inactive vs. Virgin? --Jevanyn

You're perfectly right that winter is no excuse. Including the part about "no significant wiki edits" in the definition leaves no ground for complaint about that definition. Virgin Graticule wouldn't work as a category, as the category name is already taken by the award, which resides on some graticule pages. It would make an easier task to have Inactive and Formerly Active, because there are hundreds of Inactives, more than anyone would want to change. Perhaps Active and Inactive should stay as is but some graticules would be "Inactive" and others would be "Inactive" and "Lapsed," or some such. It just occurs to me that it might be useful at the category level to know whether people have ever played in a graticule or not. You can usually tell by inspection from a graticule page, of course. -Robyn 20:13, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Some enterprising geohasher created a category for Deflowered graticules. -- Jevanyn 20:58, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Inactive as of September 2009

Looking through the most-active table, I notices that a number of formerly active graticules have gone quiet. I updated the pages to change them to inactive:

• San Francisco, California -- the example graticule
• Canberra, Australia -- home of the cube
• Adelaide, Australia
• Sacramento, California
• Malmö, Sweden
• Ottawa, Ontario
• Tallahassee, Florida
• Mansfield, Ohio -- though Alex lives in Columbus and was active as of May 2009
• Champaign/Urbana, Illinois -- maybe, I dropped a line to excellentdude to find out
• Snoqualmie, Washington -- Thomcat was a frequent visitor, but no more?
• Rochester, New York
• San Bernardino, California

On the other hand:

• Detroit, Michigan is still active. I found a couple of plans/expeditions that were linked from the homepage but didn't have the Expedition category.
• Aurora, Illinois is still active. Someone planned an expedition in August.
• Washington (West), District of Columbia is still active. I found an expedition from August.
• Eugene, Oregon is active, someone planned an expedition in May (getting close, though).
• Richmond, Virginia is inactive, but is picking up new members as Kari seems to be trying to scare up some interest.