Geohashing:Community Portal

General Discussion

Astronomy achievement?

What do people think about a ribbon for doing astronomical observation at or near the geohash? Could be gotten at the same time as the Midnight Geohash achievement (unless you don't want to stay up that late, or are doing day radio astronomy or something, I guess). Specifically, I was thinking that one could be required to report observations of a part of the sky determined by the algorithm; exactly how I'm not sure yet...the naive approach is to simply apply to fractions to the right ascension and declination, for example the west-of-30 fraction for today yields 06 13 17.9 +85 10 42.1212, closest to http://wikisky.org/starview?object_type=1&object_id=1610871882 (and only a degree away from interacting galaxies). But there's a 50% chance that the part of the sky indicated will be below the horizon at a given moment, and that only improves somewhat if you allow for the rotation of the earth to reveal more of the sky over the course of the night, since some parts of the sky are only visible at a given latitude for some times during the year, and other parts are simply not visible at a given latitude ever. So maybe altazimuth instead? But then what you're looking at is time-dependent on a smaller scale than a day, which doesn't quite fit the geohashing spirit... Arlo (talk) 17:37, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Proposed tidying of community pages

Discussion of topics not relating to a particular graticule (which can be done on the graticule's Main or Talk pages) or hash (similarly) is spread over multiple pages on the wiki: here, Talk:Main Page, Breaking News, Unofficial Invitations, and so on; and much of it refers to old versions of the algorithm, or wiki code/configurations no longer in use. It is important that these discussions be preserved for present and future hashers to have source-texts for geohashing history, but I don't think they need to be preserved in-situ (and in one sense, we already moved); and it is also important that the community easily be able to start discussions with each other. I propose that we archive completed discussions to subpages under one page name (this one would seem to be the best based on the name), with indexes by date and by topic (and by participant?) also as subpages, with ongoing discussions on the page proper; and redirect other pages to that centralised place. I would particularly like to hear objections to this in either concept or implementation. Arlo (talk) 17:37, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Discord-IRC bridge for geohashing chats

There's a plenty of tools that allow doing this. Since https://xkcd.com/1782 is as relevant as ever, if community agrees on this, I'll look into hosting such bot (personally, I'd love to see this happen). V1993 (talk) 14:08, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea IMO. You can ask January First-of-May for a webhook for bot access, he is in charge of the Discord server. --Fippe (talk) 16:21, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Um, silly question, are we talking about cross-posting IRC comments to Discord or cross-posting Discord comments to IRC? I don't exactly use the IRC much if at all (part of why I started the Discord server), so I'm not sure which option is intended. Especially considering that AFAIK these days the IRC chat is mostly bots posting the coordinates, and we have one of those on Discord already. --January First-of-May (talk) 19:15, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

It goes both ways. As for coordinate bots, it's easy enough to blacklist them from being cross-posted. As for why, well, xkcd linked above explains it pretty well, I think. It's a pretty quiet place, but some of our talk isn't bots. V1993 (talk) 20:11, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I like this idea. Which bridge bot did you have in mind? Arlo (talk) 17:59, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Post-Dark Ages TODO List

Simplify new expedition template

I find it a bit silly that we have to specify the latitude/longitude/date when using {{subst:Expedition}}, because this information is already present in the title of the page. I tried to make a template that figures them out automatically using {{SUBPAGENAME}} and {{#sub:string|start|length}}, but it looks like the substring function needs to be enabled by an administrator by setting $wgPFEnableStringFunctions = true; in LocalSettings.php. Would that be easy to do? See here for the doc on string functions. Fractal (talk) 12:45, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea and have send DanQ an email about this. --Fippe (talk) 14:38, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Good call. Configuration changed. -DanQ (talk)

Great, thanks! I changed the template accordingly (using the {{#explode}} string function) and updated the documentation. I hope I didn’t break anything! Fractal (talk) 20:39, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

wiki move cleanup: link edition

Some of special:LinkSearch&limit=500&offset=0&target=*.xkcd.com can be converted into intrawiki links or oldid template calls, and maybe others into interwiki links for the comic and blag and what-if and store? There's about 1300 links if you also include the https URLS. Arlo (talk) 00:53, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

A lazier fix would be to wait for davean to enable redirects from the old site, which he's offered to do!--DanQ (talk)

I think both approaches work together; one enables links to work while the cleanup is in progress. And the non-wiki.xkcd.com links at the xkcd.com domain are still online, and it might be nice to have them in special:interwiki. Up to you, of course. Arlo (talk) 21:58, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

FippeBot switched out the links today, with the exception of the one on the Dark Ages page. The link list seems to be cached, but some progress is already showing. Currently it contains 111 entries. It seems that all pages transcluding Template:Advert in particular seem to be stuck on the list, even if the pages itself (such as 2009-09-10 51 -1) already link to the new page. --Fippe (talk) 18:34, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

This is completed now. --Fippe (talk) 09:12, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

fix <math> tags

This is mostly a note to myself so I remember to look into this at some point. Right now if you view or preview a page with a <math> tag, Bad Things Happen. -DanQ (talk)

new style

I like a lot of things about the new stylesheet, but I wish it had these features the former one had:

1. being able to see redlink / read / unread status of pages linked from the top of each page and/or specific to the given page (Talk:s, for instance); and
2. more easily 'watchlisting' pages. Clicking on a 'more' dropdown isn't too bad, but then when I click watch I can't click anything else in that menu unless I wait 5 seconds for the popup notification to vanish by itself, or click to dismiss (which closes the menu, so I then reopen it).

What have y'all experiences with it / thoughts about it been? Arlo (talk) 08:47, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Pre-Dark Ages TODO List

Add the things you think need to be done, but can't do yourself. Remove the bullet points when you've fixed something.

iDevice apps

Both the KCKD iPhone app and the Garafa iPhone app seem to no longer work (at least not with iOS 11). I believe there are now no iPhone geohashing apps that work with iOS 11 or later ... but I'll be very happy if anyone can prove me wrong. :-) BrendanTWhite 21:18, 4 April 2018 (ACST)

The link on the iPhone app page [1] labelled "Geohash support" is broken.

misplaced expedition

Jim removed an apparently invalid expedition and photo from 2009-01-10 Someone should see if the real 2009-01-10 29 -95 is hiding someplace that isn't obvious.

archived coords

Expedition Archive pages (like 2010-07) show same coordinates for every day (looks like an error)

Started a discussion here: user talk:Tjtrumpet2323#usage of var:latdate on Template:Coordinates.2FRegular.2FlatOnly.3F - a correct use of vardefine:* might fix this if it's not going to break anything else.

LaTeX support

Does anyone have access to LocalSettings.php to set $wgUseTeX = true; so that formulas can be used? Or is there some other way to enable them that I'm not seeing? Thanks! -ralph

Now enabled Extension:Math to meet this need.--DanQ (talk)

scaled variant

Kids' Geohash? If they have a GPS enabled phone they can take part but the grid is too big so divide it into 32, 64 or even 128 (~850m x ~700m) for younger kids. Parental supervision recommended!

cats to watch

anything in Category:Needs attention might also be considered a kind of TO DO, especially Award template needed and Ribbon image needed

disappearing cat-to-expedition bug

2011-06-26_49_8 has category Category:Meetup in 49 8 on it, but doesn't appear on that category page. Is something wrong with the graticule Template? (We had a problem with spaces between the colon and the category name at one time.) Jiml 10:22, 27 June 2011 (EDT)

Not sure what you mean, 2011-06-26 49 8 is on the category page and that's the equivalent name with spaces (they are interchangable), am I missing something? - Mampfred 16:48, 27 June 2011 (EDT)

It seems to be showing up on the category page now. Not sure why the problem disappeared. Jiml 22:04, 6 July 2011 (EDT)

has notifications

I need a GEOHASH ALARM. An email to be sent to me every time the selected point is close enough to me (like less than 5 miles, for example).

Your wish is my command. Register an email address at http://xkcd.nathanwoodruff.com/Notify.aspx It will send you an email with a password. Log in and enter a Graticle Latitude and a graticule Longitude in the Grat Lat and Grat Lon boxes 33 -84 for Atlanta Georgia. If you want to enter the Global Hash, check the Global box, Then enter a Location Latitude and Longitude in the Location Lat and Location Lon. 33.75 -84.39 for the dead center of Atlanta Georgia. You will need to enter a maximum distance. If you enter 5 miles it will send an email if the days coordinates for the chosen graticule is less than 5 miles away. Click on the "Add" button. It will send you an email from now on every day after the Dow open is released. --NWoodruff (talk) 18:25, 13 November 2014 (EST)

There is now help instructions for the Notify program available here help text

gmaps versus osm

Switch the maps on the wiki to OpenStreetMap (perhaps through OpenLayers)? The Google Maps v1 API has sunsetted and now all maps show an ugly warning that make them basically unusable. One could update to v2, but with the same effort why not support such a quality community project (besides doing the OpenStreetMap achievement of course :)?

Did this as part of the post-Dark Ages switchover. -DanQ (talk)

Translation

(moved to geohashing:translation)

Related Projects

These projects are related to geohashing in as much as they use GPS receivers.

Hello, Internet!

• Geocaching - Global GPS cache hunt
• Opencaching - GPS cache hunt wthout the "premium fee"
• Waymarking - find and photograph interesting points
• Munzee - find and log QR code stickers or virtual points
• Geodashing - Monthly points, randomly created
• Geotude - Numbering the One Degree Graticules
• Open Street Map - create a free map along the way
• Dead Drops - Some sort of digital geocaching
• Bookcrossing links people with free books at locations revealed on the Internet.
• confluence.org - visiting every integer latitude/longitude crossing point in the world
• Randonauts - visiting coordinates derived from perceived patterns in the random noise of PRNGs
• (broken links, was http://apps.facebook.com/losttrack and http://tanglefoot.cs.byu.edu/~snppla/losttrack - Support research by submitting your tracklogs.

Other projects

Other projects are related for their surprise social aspect.

Geohashing leagues, guilds, or organizations exist in the following online games:

• Improbable Island