Show why a location is nerdy

[edwinm]

When submitting a location, you can enter why it's nerdy.

But when I look at the map, I don't see this reason.

In a church in a nearby village, they have a Foucault pendulum, but if you only show the name, you get the name of the church. Not very nerdy. But the Foucault pendulum is, but this information would be missing.

[popey]

Hi @edwinm - excellent topic!

I think this perhaps goes along with the whole categorising and tagging conversations we keep having around these parts.

What might the perfect venue front matter look like? Some thoughts, by looking at a random example: https://nerdydaytrips.org/daytrip/oc/nz/hobbiton-movie-set-lord-of-the-rings-the-hobbit/

Here's the full entry:

---
slug: 'daytrip/oc/nz/hobbiton-movie-set-lord-of-the-rings-the-hobbit'
date: '2025-05-29T22:33:33.695Z'
poster: 'TimoMicro'
lat: '-37.857167'
lng: '175.680871'
location: '501 Buckland Road, Matamata, New Zealand'
title: 'Hobbiton Movie Set - Lord of the Rings - The Hobbit'
external_url: https://www.hobbitontours.com/
---
Guided tours of (recreations of) famous sets of Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit film trilogies. Visit the Shire, marvel at Hobbit holes, and have a drink at the Green Dragon Inn.

Current entries

• slug: Looks okay-ish, I didn't give this much thought. I just wanted to reduce the number of files in a directory, and have a clue from the URL where in the world it is (yes, we possibly could split further (e.g. in the USA) by state, na/us/ca for example))
• date: Date originally submitted, and contains far too much detail! IMO it should be YYYY-MM-DD, no more detail than that
• poster: Name given when it was submitted. No authentication or verification done (or needed). Just a nickname. Might be best to rename this (see below).
• lat/long: Required to put a pin in the right place

Easy suggested changes

# existing fields)
date: '2025-05-29'           # creation date (simplified)
updated_date: '2025-06-15'   # last modification date
updated_by: 'AnotherUser'    # who made the last update
# optional: keep creation info
created_by`: 'TimoMicro'      # original poster (rename from 'poster')

Do we "need" to track all updates?

date: '2025-05-29'
created_by: 'TimoMicro'
updates:
  - date: '2025-06-15'
    by: 'AnotherUser'
    changes: 'Updated external URL and opening details'
  - date: '2025-07-02'
    by: 'ModeratorName'
    changes: 'Added OSM node link'

Possible further changes

Categories and tags

I'm leaning towards a hybrid approach - start with a predefined set of common categories (movie-sets, museums, historic-sites, quirky-attractions, etc.) but allow free-form tags as well. Such as:

category: 'movie-set'
tags: ['lord-of-rings', 'hobbit', 'film-location', 'guided-tours']

Maybe the site could filter based on category (or categories) and/or tag (or tags).

Some more suggestions:

# Core identification
difficulty: 'easy'  # easy/moderate/hard/unknown (for accessibility/effort)
type: 'attraction'  # attraction/museum/landmark/location/experience

# Practical info (keep minimal)
cost: 'paid'        # free/paid/donation (general indicator only)
booking_required: true  # boolean for whether you need to book ahead

# Nerdy metadata
featured_in: ['Lord of the Rings', 'The Hobbit']  # what makes it nerdy
year_established: 2002  # when relevant (not maintenance-heavy)

# Quality/curation
verified: true      # has someone actually been there?
featured: false     # highlight particularly good suggestions

Fields I'd like to avoid: Opening hours, detailed accessibility info, specific pricing, contact details - that's Google Maps territory and becomes stale quickly.

The key is focusing on the "nerdy" angle and basic practicalities rather than trying to be a comprehensive travel guide. What makes each place special to nerds, and just enough info to help people decide if it's worth the trip, or at least an investigation.

I know @darkling has strong opinons on these kids of things :)

[edwinm]

Looks really good.

Making up a slug is a bit annoying. I would generated it (from the title)

What can go in the body? Only plain text? Text with headers and images?

[andibing]

I've put tagging in a separate discussion thread.