Geohashing talk:Current events

The experience for a brand new user coming to the Main Page and wanting to geohash is confusing. A recent discussion in the geohashing IRC channel led to a number of changes to the Main Page and pages linked from there, including this one. Seeing as it is the second link in the left nav bar, people are going to click on it, and we should make it more relevant than a static page essentially restating what is on the Main Page.

Once upon a time, for the first few months of geohashing, people used to post their geohashing intentions in one big glorious mess on the page for that date. But then people got the hang of using expedition and graticule pages, and by October 2008 no one was doing that anymore. It's still a natural thing to expect. A new user asked me "where are all the expeditions I can go on listed?" He understood the answer, but wanted to know how he, as a new user, was supposed to know where his graticule page was and if anyone was going.

This revamp of Current Events is a new proposed use of the page. It's another way of showing off your expedition where everyone can see it, and an easy way to browse what is planned.

I hope that someone can automate this, to automatically seek and display the pages with the Expedition planning category for each date. This is a start.

Please check it out, use it if you can and rewrite anything that needs it. -Robyn 03:21, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Automated Crawling for Current Events

Since I will likely be bored, and confined primarily to my apartment, this weekend, I will look into creating a bot to crawl the Expedition planning category, and auto-creating the list of planned expeditions for all dates available, as well as for the last couple days. I don't know if we can easily have an automatically populated list like we have on the front page, since it would probably be best to keep the amount of work for creating expedition planning pages down. The unfortunate thing is that with a bot, the data on the page may not be the freshest, but I have some ideas on how to deal with that. --aperfectring 18:13, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Cool! In manually populating the page, I found it most productive to search for e.g. "2009-06-13". There were only two pages in the planning category, but there were things on graticule pages and graticule talk pages. A bot could probably link to the page and section it found that text, and paste the first line following it. Graticules like New Jersey that post the daily location even when no one goes could be either put on an exclusion list or prevailed on to include a string like "no plans yet" that tell the bot to skip this one. At any rate, when it is botted, there must be room to easily edit manually. How often would the bot look? -Robyn 18:29, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the key is to influence people to create their expedition page before leaving, and make sure that the expedition page is added to the category. If we can get that mentality in place, then the bot can check for changes in pages that link to the category and only update the page as needed. Do keep in mind that this is all just vague thoughts right now, and I will plan it out much more fully when I am not at work. =P --aperfectring 18:39, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

This is so wiki. I love how I can have ideas and then people make them better and make them work. -Robyn 18:43, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Oooh, I just had a flash of genius (it hurt). But I had better post it before I forget. We could have a "Have the bot create your expedition planning page for you" section where you give it your graticule's name or lat/lon, the date, and possibly a user (for who is going), and it will create the page using the approved template for you in a couple minutes. --aperfectring 20:28, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

The most pressing issue right now is what to call my bot. Voice your opinion or add new name suggestions below! --aperfectring 18:55, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

• ApeRobot - Vaguely similar to my nick, and my favorite option.
• APRBot - Much more representative of who owns it.
• RingBot
• AperfectBot - Robyn's favorite. relet's too.

Considering that I didn't realize who "APR" was in the chatroom for quite a while, and that the first line on the bot's page will be something like "This is a bot owned by Aperfectring," you might as well go with your first choice. Also: Ringbot, Aperfectbot. (The last is my favourite). -Robyn 19:01, 12 June 2009 (UTC)