New Trip Report Tool - It's Beta

[Quarryographer]

Great work so far! This tool has come a long way. My recommendation to suit "the second group" as you mentioned, would be to have a search ability like (>or <5.10) in the category (alpine)with location (north cascades). Or another example might be (> WI3) (WA state). I don't know if this is possible, but it would be neat to enter the desired agenda and see what comes up. Possibly things that never would've been considered...

[jon]

Great work so far! This tool has come a long way. My recommendation to suit "the second group" as you mentioned, would be to have a search ability like (>or <5.10) in the category (alpine)with location (north cascades). Or another example might be (> WI3) (WA state). I don't know if this is possible, but it would be neat to enter the desired agenda and see what comes up. Possibly things that never would've been considered...

 

That is the direction we want to take things. However, we need to have a system in place where that metadata can be entered and stored.

[jon]

Ok. So I just pushed a pretty major change. With it comes a lot of things that need to be fixed. But the goal this time around was to get something working and to see if it makes sense.

 

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/tripreportsbeta

 

You'll see now there is a Google Map. On the map are pinpoints for each peak that have a TR associated with it. What I did was write a small script that went through all the TRs and associated a peak with it, in a one to many fashion. It's not a simple process and there are a lot of TRs that have the wrong peak associated with them or vice versa. This is something that can get fixed, and again this is just a proof of concept.

 

When you click on a pin on the map it will bring up info for the associated peak, including name, elevation, and the number of TRs. There is also a link that if you click on it will bring up those TRs in the table below. Click on a different peak it brings up the TRs for that peak.

 

So, here is the DISCLAIMER and all the catches....

-The table and the checkboxes do not drive the map data. You cannot filter the map data. It is what it is

-The map data is rough associations made by a script. It by no means does it represents total coverage, anything resembling accuracy, and does not include recent TRs (I generated this data back in March I believe). It also is only displaying peaks over 7000'.

- One you use the map you are screwed if you want to use the Table on it's own; I need to add a reset button. Until then, refresh the page.

 

I know people will want to be able to filter the map in a similar fashion as the table and I can make those changes. I'd love to get some feedback on whether people find the map usage and association with the table confusing, or any other feedback.

Edited July 27, 2012 by jon

[ivan]

no smith/steins pillar/menagerie tr's? beacon? kkkalifornia?

 

i like being able to see them all grouped so easily

[AlpineK]

I know work in progress.

 

When I clicked on Bacon Peak in Washington State I got three TRs. The three are Bacon Rawk, rawk, Rawkz posted by Ivan. His TRs are about a climb/climbing in Oregon not Bacon Peak in WA.

[jon]

no smith/steins pillar/menagerie tr's? beacon? kkkalifornia?

 

i like being able to see them all grouped so easily

 

I'll be adding Cali shortly.

 

There are currently no crags, just peak data that I got from the USGS servers (thanks to Steph for starting me out on this!). I'll be adding crags shortly.

[jon]

My first iteration all of Ivan's TRs actually associated with the closest bar or liquor store to the climb.

 

To explain a bit how I did this, I took the peak name and then stripped it of it's prefix or suffix ie mt mount mountain peak etc., so when the search executed against the TR db it hit anything with Bacon in it. Where this has really caused problems are things like West Peak etc. But again, this was just a quick attempt to populate a table in a database. I'm going to attempt to clean up the results a bit, and then allow people to report TRs that are either associated with the wrong peak or not associated. Moving forward I need to add the ability to people to add peaks and crags and have that process go through a confirmation/moderation process, and then allow people to add peaks to TRs, and finally allow people to go back and add them to old ones. Lot's to do

[jon]

Got a PM from someone saying that "select all" function isn't working. Thanks for the tip, I'll get it fixed.

[Josh Lewis]

Awesome tool! Very useful. Works fine on my end.

[Gaucho Argentino]

Hei... the tool looks cool. Wonder if you'll ever add the possibility to link one TRs posted by someone else in the climb to the profiles of everyone in that climb.

 

Thanks!

GA

[Lukas]

i came here to write what gaucho wrote.

 

it would be nice if all climbers could be "tagged" in a TR and that TR appear in our profile

[brihuang]

Hi Jon,

 

A few suggestions:

 

1) Trip reports needs a "Date Posted" and "Date Climbed" category somewhere.

2) It'll be cool if we can rate trip reports. If we just want to read an entertaining or inspiring story, then we can just organize by "highest rated" within our search results.

 

My opinions and suggestions.

[olyclimber]

Good one brihuang! I agree, would help with post dated TRs.

[brianbauer]

This forum seems to be fairly reliant on a specific 3rd party forum software, but if there was any way we could open source this, us developer types could hack away on some of these feature requests and submit a pull request...less work for you. Just a thought...not sure if that would be possible given the current platform.

[Josh Lewis]

if there was any way we could open source this, us developer types could hack away on some of these feature requests and submit a pull request...

 

Perhaps like a Github page for making pull requests? Also is there a UserVoice page for CC? It would be fun to see a modernized version of CC. If there was interest in this, I'd be willing to contribute to the project.

[jon]

I think opening up parts of cc.com for outside development via GitHub is an interesting idea, and it's something we are certainly open to. I'm glad you brought it up. The tl;dr goes a bit like this...

 

The forum software we currently use, UBB, has been essentially abandoned by the current owner, who purchased it a few years ago. Since it's still privately owned, we wouldn't be able open development up publicly, only in a private group. That said, we've been planning, for quite some time, to move away from UBB. The software we are moving to, IPB, has been struggling to release their v4 of their suite (which includes a gallery). I think the release is fairly imminent and I've actually found someone to port over to the TR functionality. But like UBB, it's privately owned and not open source, so any development would have to be done privately, which has it's drawbacks. The only open source forum software I would consider is Discourse (created by the founder of StackOverflow), but I have my reservations about it, even though I think it's.... neat. But bringing this up is certainly making me consider whether going with IPB is the right choice.

 

So all that said, I/we are open to embracing a more open sourced development of certain tools on cc.com, especially the TR functionality. I work for a company that is involved in open source, so I understand the power (and responsibility) of embracing it. A long time ago it was requested we add to the TR system similar functionality to what Mountain Project offers, with a route database. Part of this request was because Fred had said he was no longer going to update the CAGs. We built a couple mockups in Rails, but nothing of much substance. If I were to pick something to work on collaboratively, I think that would be it, build an API layer that could accommodate a future mobile app.

 

If anyone else is interested respond in the thread, and maybe say where you are located.

[Brian Dunlay]

I'm interested in helping. In Seattle. I may be new around here, but I'm looking to get involved and to meet some climbers.

 

I've got 5 years experience with Django, some Node.js, and a bit of Flask. Modern TR tool and API for mobile app would be great! HTTPS would be nice as well.

[num1mc]

I've got 5 years experience with Django, some Node.js, and a bit of Flask. Modern TR tool and API for mobile app would be great! HTTPS would be nice as well.

 

Huh?

 

[brianbauer]

jon, I'd be be down to help out with the API (or whatever else). I'm in Seattle (occasionally Bend), and currently work in Ruby/Rails/Ember.

[WaterproofMonk]

Where's the button to create a new trip report? I can never find it! aaaaa

[Josh Lewis]

Go to the Trip Reports section, view the category you want to post in, click the "New Trip Report" button near the top.