How to provide venue rejection feedback?

[popey]

I mentioned in the latest blog post, An Amazing Start, that we currently don't have a mechanism for feedback to people who submitted venues, that they were rejected.

I don't want people to create accounts, sign in, and provide personal details just to be told "Sorry, we aren't accepting that venue because: $REASON".

However, people might submit and think it's gone into a black hole, wasn't accepted, or is just waiting.

One idea I had on this was to have a generated page that is not indexed by robots but is linked from various places, which a) spells out the submission criteria and b) lists all the rejected ones and why they were rejected.

That way, people can just go to the list, look at the places, and find out why their interesting place isn't accepted.

Thoughts? Better ways to do this?

[darkling]

Link the acceptance criteria page from the submission page as well. That way, you have a chance of deciding whether it's relevant before you make an entry. :)

[takarabune]

my 2¢
Regardless of having a 'rejects page', it'd be useful to list the criteria for inclusion and refusal that are being used. And to outline who is making those decisions and how the project is organised in this regard.

My question is what is a nerdy day trip? does that differ from a 'nerdy point of interest'. Is what's nerdy for me the same as what's nerdy for you?

While big venues should be listed (Smithsonian, British Museum, V&A) I think there's more value in relatively obscure venues.
How much should there be to see and do at a venue? (see discussion of borderline cases elsewhere)
For example, there's a carved set of footprints at a harbour near Dublin where an English king landed but is it worthy of a day out? rather than being a point of interest?
Or, at Nagoya airport there is a public viewing deck (unusual I think in large airports) where you can see ground operations up close and sometimes worlds largest cargo planes but is it really a nerdy day trip? (for extra points there's a sentou where you can watch planes from the bath)

How curated beyond spam do you (we?) want the site to be?

[darkling]

While I've been going through the old entries and adding URLs to them, I've been generally pretty broad-minded about nerdy. For example, while I don't tend to get particularly excited about battlefields, there's clearly many people out there who do (up to and including reenactors). People get nerdy about all sorts of things (geology, fabric arts), and I wouldn't want to exclude those things just because I'm mostly a science and technology geek with a sideline in iron age settlements.

On the day out side of things, some things are pretty small, like the king's footprints you mention. They're not a whole day trip, but if you're in the area, they could be of interest. There's plenty of things in this category. "Highest motorway in the UK" springs to mind. You wouldn't necessarily take the time to go and visit that location specifically, but it might inform your route if you're driving in the area.

[takarabune]

I then wonder if it's worth having tags to classify and search the entries.
eg point of interest, history, technology, trains,

[darkling]

@popey's mentioned this idea elsewhere. Definitely a good idea. See my comment on the bug: #143 (comment)

(I think my preference would be for a hierarchical taxonomy maintained by the site editors, rather than the free-tagging end of things. Possibly with a "suggest a tag" option on the submission form.)

[takarabune]

Also, I think anyone adding a venue ought to have personally visited it.

[takarabune]

for multiple submissions to a single venue. Is it worth merging the descriptions if they give extra personal insights to a venue. ?

[popey]

for multiple submissions to a single venue. Is it worth merging the descriptions if they give extra personal insights to a venue. ?

Yeah, maybe it's worth signposting this when we get to the point where we detect a dupe:

• User adds new venue
• System says "That already exists" with (Cancel) / (Edit venue) / (Add anyway)

Cancel is obvious, and Add anyway would lead through the existing flow.

The "Edit venue" option could present a "friendly" (as in, more friendly than dropping someone to GitHub) "form" where the text can be modified, or added to. Saving this would put it in the queue, and once past human/robot eyeballs, lands as a pull request on GitHub (as we do for 'Add venue').

I think making the method to add and edit existing sites is just as vital (for newbs / non-tech nerds) as adding new sites.

[darkling]

It's not going to be massively easy to spot duplicates -- people's idea of a GPS location is pretty vague (going by the data I've seen so far), names may not be the same, or even similar, if one person used an English version of a non-English name. I'd definitely expect there to be duplicates missed. Possibly false positives as well (Museo Enzo Ferrari is not the same place as Museo Ferrari).

It's worth doing something anyway, but have a think about the two main failure modes as well.

[bsanders]

Going back to the first post:

One idea I had on this was to have a generated page that is not indexed by robots but is linked from various places, which a) spells out the submission criteria and b) lists all the rejected ones and why they were rejected.

I came here to suggest just that. I'd be satisfied with a link at the bottom of the submission page that goes to a "look here for rejected locations" ... maybe with the rejecting linking back to the PR?