Talk:2008 Most active graticules

2008 Discussion

Editor's Notes

I added to the table for monthly totals. The Boston crew led for the first few months then vanished - is there an expiration date for internet memes and mobs? I also added the monthly leaders. My intention is to update this once a month, and keep an eye out for any old expedition page edits that might change the totals. I'd also like to add something to track metro areas and split cities - Vancouver and Surrey are together, etc. --Thomcat 18:43, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Per discussion below, this award is on a "per graticule" basis - I won't be tracking metro areas. Congratulations to Würzburg, Germany for entering the rankings this month. I've still got a lot of pages to read through for non-standard expeditions, so these totals might change a little before the end of the year. Keep on geohashing! --Thomcat 17:58, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

2008 complete. I didn't do much reading of pages for non-standard expeditions, but I did watch the "recent changes" daily to update my totals for older expeditions. I'll create an archive page for 2008 when I post the 2009 totals, and I might change the layout slightly at that time. I know those with opinions won't be shy. --Thomcat 22:04, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Calculating Rankings

• one) Woo hoo! Slave Lake made the charts! Go me and ICWB! I don't think we'll manage the same for Grande Cache, Alberta. It's really mountainous here, and winter is coming on.
• two) I think of the people in my graticule as a team who are out to beat mother nature as much as possible. I wish there were some way to register the people who belong to a graticule and then have all their exploits count. For example I remember recently that Vancouver and Bellingham coordinates were both do-able, but I chose the latter because I hadn't logged Bellingham yet. One of the Seattle meetups was actually me, dragging a local and another Vancouver person. So I effectively scored on my own net there, allowing Seattle to edge Vancouver in the standings. It's not really a competition, so who cares, but the standings don't accurately show how rabidly active the Vancouver graticule is, and I'm proud of us.

We could add a category (or more if people from multiple graticules at the hashpoint) to each successful expedition: "Category:Count for (Coordinates e.g. Vancouver)". So if you go from Vancouver to Seattle, the expedition would (via an automated script) get 1 point for Seattle (because the expedition page name is 2008-10-08_Seattlecoords) and 1 point for Vancouver (because the page is included into the "count" category for Vancouver). This would lead to one ranking for "graticule with most active geohashers", one for "most visited graticule" and perhaps a combined one. Danatar 13:31, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Theoretically that's quite possible to do automatically, just by having a standard section name for Participants and for any participant that has a User page, a standard way to display home graticule there. Or you could list your home graticule in a standard way with your name in the participants list. -Robyn 19:10, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• three) The best register of graticule activity would probably be something like persons attending geohashes, divided by graticule population, multiplied by a million, so that the numbers aren't tiny fractions of one. You'd have to have graticules include an estimate of their population on their graticule page. This would also make the comparison more fair when considering split graticules, because including more potential geohashing locations would also include more population.
• four)Thank you for the work you did in updating this, and I don't expect you or anyone to ever do it by population. It's just theory.

-Robyn 19:48, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

rm Vancouver/Surrey?

Imho the page is about most active graticules, not cities. -- Relet 20:21, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

An excellent point. Just pointing out how active the group to the north is. For that matter, Seattle could include all of their eastern neighbor also. And re: own goal scoring - I fully intend to geohash in Vancouver and/or Surrey someday soon.  :) --Thomcat 20:32, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

In Thomcat's defence, split cities with the same name for each half would be counted together as one. In any other metropolitan area the Vancouver and Surrey graticules would be together as a Spilt City, but it just so happens that the 123W meridian runs in the same direction and within a few blocks of Boundary Road, making it reasonable to name the half with Vancouver, Richmond, Ladner, North Vancouver and West Vancouver "Vancouver" and the half with Burnaby, New Westminster, Delta, Langley, Coquitlam, Surrey, etcetera all "Surrey." Are we the only major metropolitan area that is split and doesn't use a split city page?

That all said, I don't think Vancouver & Surrey should be combined that way anymore than I think Vancouver/Slave Lake should be. And Thomcat: wait until November when I'll be home before you come north of the border. It's really fun to meet people at the geohash. -Robyn 22:42, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Re "In Thomcat's defence, split cities with the same name for each half would be counted together as one.": I agree that Vancouver/Surrey is a split city. But this page lists graticules, not cities. I see that it's interesting to have something like "most active communities" or "most active cities" - but it's much more difficult to draw a line. The Berlin "community" for example goes visiting all neighbouring graticules. Are these expeditions relevant? Now if there would be a community in the neighbouring graticule of Leipzig or Dresden, do they automatically merge? Or do you go by density of agglomerations? What if you live in the suburbs or outskirts of Berlin? Are you still in? ... The graticule subdivision is very arbitrary, but at least it's well-defined (and would lend itself to automation at some point).

I mean, I really like the idea of highlighting the most active communities. And I certainly don't need strict rules or ranking lists. Maybe that idea would work if you let people assign themselves to a given community, to generate a summary of their expeditions.. -- Relet 23:08, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Here in Sydney, Australia we're also a split city that doesn't actually use the split. In fact we're actually a four-way split, as the graticule corner is right in the middle of metro Sydney. Our expeditions frequently are in 3 of the 4 graticules (the fourth only has a tiny piece of land). If we combined the graticules of Sydney, the Blue Mountains and Wollongong we'd totally dominate the charts! --CJ 23:10, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Ribbon?

Should there be ribbons to put on the graticule page? With different levels (month/all time and successful/tried) like this:

The Würzburg, Germany graticule (49 9) earned the most active graticule achievement for the month of
October 2008 in the category coordinates reached by being the location of 5 successful expeditions.

The Berlin, Germany graticule (52 13) earned the most active graticule achievement for the month of
October 2008 in the category total expeditions by being the location of 6 expeditions.

The Seattle, Washington graticule (47 -122) earned the most active graticule achievement in the category
total expeditions by being the location of 42 expeditions from the start of geohashing until October 2008.

What do you think? Feel free to rephrase the text. - Danatar 15:58, 19 November 2008 (UTC)