New Features
Mon, 13/10/2008 - 18:14 — matt
I've added a couple of new features to the site here is a list below:
- The ability to add "Last Posting Times" to new postboxes in a separate field.
- Added "Business Postbox" to the type of postbox (This is a postbox that only accepts franked mail).
- Added a text area (multiple line input) to "Further Details" and "Last Posting Times" rather than being restricted to a fixed text field.
Comments
Richard Yes. Box BH21 88 in
Richard
Yes. Box BH21 88 in Dorset is not on the list, and neither is box PAsomething-or-other in Station Road, Inverkip!
I've just spotted a post box
I've just spotted a post box that does not exist in the PDF file. What's going on here ? It is SG1 412. Has anyone else come across this ?
Matt, are you back at the end of April ? Six+ months without any new blog entries from you is a bit ridiculous. I'm sorry to moan, but it's your own fault for creating a genuinely useful site !
Phil: The issue of posting
Phil:
The issue of posting images has been raised before, but nothing ever came of it.
Some people are presenting images on their own hosting sites, but they are a bit difficult to refer-to from here, because any URLs in the Further Details field are likely to get truncated, mangled, or escaped, due to the weirdness of the way this site is implemented.
I don't know what's happened to Matt (owner of this web site). Postings to this blog and to his email address are going unanswered. He said he was going to be out of circulation for the first few months of this year. I don't know whether this strictly means "until the end of April" or what.
I've given up adding contributions to this web site because of the increased likelihood of duplications cropping up.
Does anyone else know what's happened to Matt ?
Richard [in SG1]
Has the issue of adding a
Has the issue of adding a picture been raised?
Any chance in putting
Any chance in putting pre-existing postboxen on the "contribute" screen ? It's getting very difficult to prevent entering duplicates now.
Any chance of a bulk DOWN load as well ? I'd like to run some statistical/geographical analyses on the postboxen that are uploaded.
You can view pictures of all
You can view pictures of all the postboxes I have contributed, here:
http://www.geograph.org.uk/search.php?i=4958060
Welcome back, Matt. If
Welcome back, Matt. If there's anything I can do to assist, without compromising the personal data on your web servers, I'm happy to help.
Richard [in SG1]
Hello and thanks for a useful
Hello and thanks for a useful website. I hope it continues to flourish. I've only had time to read some of the previous comments and I may be repeating other discussions here, but I have a couple of ideas on contributions and editing:
Websites such as this rely on "good citizens" and ease of use. If left unrestricted, I fear the site may suffer from the antics of idiots, and there are plenty of those around. It seems to me that some sort of logon system is necessary to allow contributors to edit any information they know to be in need of correction or updating. It would also let the webmaster to conduct some quality control, and allow users to contact the webmaster regarding information posted by certain contributors.
A contributor's name or username could simply be included in a separate field along with the information for the respective postbox. This would give an incentive to contributors who like to see the fruits of their kindness. Real names and email addresses do not need to be given. To make things a little more fun, a regularly updated list of postboxes including contributor names could be published. The list can be sorted by - for example - geographical area and/or by contributor. This may sound a bit vain, but it is an incentive nonetheless. Chris Downer's idea of photos would add a nice touch - there are some lovely old postboxes dotted around the kingdom.
Finally, I have read comments regarding the omission of information from some contributors (e.g. no last posting times). There are usually good reasons for this. For example, I have noted the locations of some postboxes while I happened to be driving past. I'm not likely to get out of my car and note down the last posting times, but I did remember the positions and contributed them to the site, including a relevant description of the postbox location. This is far better than nothing.
Sorry for the absense,
Sorry for the absense, PostBoxr is something that i'm running in my spare time and i've been very busy in my private life and will be for the first few months of next year. Don't worry I am working on updates and they will be implemented in due course.
Richard:
I'll post soon about how to submit a bulk upload.
Chris Downer: Yes, my pairing
Chris Downer:
Yes, my pairing is listed as one box as well. I entered it as such because, at some time, Matt (wherever he's got to (!)) will have to implement some form of duplicate detection and if it sees two boxes together (like <2m apart), then the question arises as to whether it should treat it/them as a duplication or two singles.
In case anybody's interested (probably not), you can type HTML in the Further Details box (although without the ampersand character) so a line-break can go in as <BR> . I hope that came out right.
Where's Matt ? Is he ill ?
Hi Richard. The two postboxes
Hi Richard. The two postboxes with the same number are listed as one on the Royal Mail list.
Can something be done about
Can something be done about the line-wrapping, please, Matt ?
Whenever I type in a long description, the input box wraps it, but the resultant lines are just concatenated with not even a space between. This works the same whether the entered newlines are hard or soft.
I'm still losing stuff after ampersand signs; using the HTML escape does not work.
Matt ? Matt ? Speak to us, O Leader.
Chris Downer: Can you let me
Chris Downer: Can you let me know where this postbox-pair is, please ? Does it show up on the .pdf as one box or two (albeit with the same number). I've seen postboxen paired before (such as a bizbox next to a pillar box) or for additional capacity. This (in HP1) was the first time I'd seen two physical boxen with the same number, though. I'll have to see what's on the .pdf
I need to do a mass upload of postboxen from time to time, and find the process of drilling down into the map (and then drilling back up again, to move the marker that I forgot I had) is getting very trying. Is there any way Matt (Matt ? Are you there ?) that I can do a mass upload using coordinates (coming from some formatted text file) rather than a map-pick?
Another thing I'd like to see is "this box was submitted by xxx". Frequent Spotters could have a sort of login mechanism and we could have a Spotter of the Week or whatever.
Where is Matt, anyway ? The latest blog root entry is over two months old. Perhaps he wasn't aware of the monster that he would create. Let's see what happens to this ampersand sign in HTML -> & . Did that come out right ?
Richard There are two
Richard
There are two postboxes outside a post office by me, with the same number. I have just submitted both of them, alongside each other, noting the box number and that it is the same number as the one next to it.
(Most of those seem to have different numbers so I was surprised that they were the same - but there you go!)
Is there any chance of adding
Is there any chance of adding some form of editing facility ? This has been promised for two+ months now.
I managed to performed a FastSpot(tm) of 48+ new postboxen from a moving bus yesterday. These are backed-up on my MDA but I'm a bit reluctant to contribute them yet because I don't have full position info (+-100m due to GPS lag and bus speed) and I don't have LastCollexion times or Box Numbers. These absences aren't a problem for some people so I'd *like* to add them now.
However, I don't want to go through them in 4 months time, when I have more data and go through manually adding them again and emailing Matt to remove all the duplicates that will result.
Even some form of "submit a secret PIN" in the entry form will at least allow people to edit THEIR OWN postboxen when they get more data. This isn't ideal but it's the quickest solution of which I can think.
I doubt Matt will want to receive tens of daily requests of the "please move this PB 34m NNE and change LC times to HHMM etc" nature.
Regarding anb's comment
-----------------------
Yes, Postboxr seems to truncate at the amersand sign. Perhaps putting it in as the HTML equivalent escape will work. It truncates on storage, not on display. This seems to be a problem with the SQL (?) parser
The escapes are a bit silly though; escaping things with backslash is supposed to be used for clean TRANSFER, not for DISPLAYING. I can only suggest that you use the HTML equivs for these as well.
I wonder what Matt thinks.
Oh, and another thing, what are we supposed to do when we get TWO postboxen with the same number, as I found in HP1 the other day: two identical dual-aperture boxen 1 meter apart, with the same number and same collexion times !
I've just added a few post
I've just added a few post boxes but the further details field has a few issues:
1. it has escaped an apostrophe so that it appears as \' instead of '
2. it has truncated the information I typed in. I don't know whether it is stored truncated or just displayed truncated, but it has cut off some useful information.
(A) Regarding 'voluntary'
(A) Regarding 'voluntary' boxes; not so sure. There is one in my local Sainsbury's but it does have a kind of Royal Mail collection plate on it, and it is on the Royal Mail's list.
(B) There are particular locations (e.g. West Bexington in Dorset) where no matter how hard I click, it will just not submit! Any ideas?
(C) How about a way of adding photos of the boxes?
I'm a bit dubious about Matt
I'm a bit dubious about Matt Brice(?) allowing unfettered editing ability to the site; without a proper login facility, there is the possibility that people will maliciously delete/alter postbox data.
Having a separate field for the box number would be useful as well; it would help eliminate duplicates and give an idea as to how much of a given area was "done".
Similar to Matt
Similar to Matt Ketteringham's comment above, I think an Edit Details function (possibly within the Contribute page) would be useful. For example if someone has added a box in slightly the wrong place, or has not added details like last posting times, they can be added later when someone with the knowledge comes along.
PS. Great idea for the site.
Genius idea. One extra
Genius idea. One extra feature for you to consider though; I've just added a new box on Churwell in Leeds and accidentally spelt the location wrong (Churwekk). I didn't notice it until the confirmation screen, sorry.
How about a 'go back and correct it option' on that confirmation screen. It would have helped me, and I can't be the only eejit about to use this site :P
Regards,
M@
I've now restored my computer
I've now restored my computer to factory conditions and reloaded all my software. I now get all the teardrops shewn in the correct colors and size. I now also get the new dialog fields. I've tried it on IE and it also works correctly, but I hadn't tried it before the reload.
As regards postboxen inside private premises, some are "official", some are not. All the official ones that I've seen inside private premises are what I call "plastic pillars"; the unofficial ones that I've seen in private premises are in a variety of shapes/colors/materials. The most recent one that I saw/added was in a Sainsbury's, and was part of an advertising stand. There is wording on it to say "posting in this box can not be legally accepted as giving an item into the custody of the Royal Mail" OWTTE.
If we are going to include these, we really need to make it clear that it's an unofficial box. Otherwise, you (or the contributor) might conceivably be sued if an item goes missing after being posted in one of those boxes.
By the way, am I the only one who inputs last collection times ? I've never seen any other contributors include it.
I was thinking the other day that maybe you should modify the concept of "nearest postbox" to include only those where you could walk to before the day's last collection.
Why do people not include the last collection times, I wonder. They're printed on the box for all to see.
Also, could you include existing postboxes on the map when adding new ones, to assist in preventing duplications.
I've noticed that you've manually changed a few of my entries to put the last collection times in the last posting times new fields. Are you doing this manually ? I wrote these entries to assist machine parsing. If you look for a string that starts "LC:" and ends either with a semicolon or EOL, you should be able to extract the last posting data.
I think the marker problem
I think the marker problem you're having is something that firefox is doing (try refreshing the page a few times). I think that it isn't getting the updated scripts that contain the code with the new features, When I added the new features I also updated the contribute bubble to contain "Business Postbox" and "Last Posting Times" as input fields, it appears that you're not getting these either. As I said before I have checked this on a few different systems and it works with no problems. Are you able to try it with Internet Explorer/another browser then we know it is Firefox. Also, I do the majority of my testing on Firefox and have had no problems.
I didn't realise that the postboxes inside premises were not "official" postboxes. I think they should be added, there are a good few already listed already. Keep them coming!!
Let me know how you get on with IE.
Matt, can you make "business
Matt, can you make "business postbox" available on the "box type" dropdown menu, and make the "last posting times" show up in that dialog and on the search results as well ?
Well, I've cleared my browser
Well, I've cleared my browser cache and I still get a large symbol. I've uploaded the screen capture to ImageShack for you to see. It is at
http://img396.imageshack.us/img396/6493/badboxaw1.jpg
This is a part of Stevenage, SG1. Please compare it with what you get.
As for a "voluntary" box, I mean one that isn't operated by the Royal Mail, but is provided as a service to customers at such places as Hotels, Workplaces, Halls of Residence, Supermarkets etc.
In practice, they are emptied by the RM on an informal basis, or a member of staff at the Hotel/whatever just collects them together every so often and posts them in a conventional box.
I can get you a picture if you'd like.
I'm not quite sure what you
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "voluntary" box? Are postboxes in stores not official postboxes?
The business postbox type works fine on my system, you could try emptying the cache of the browser. It should load as an orange marker, I have checked this on a few systems and it works as it should.
I notice that you have
I notice that you have converted one of my existing pillar boxen (correctly) into a "business postbox". Thank you.
However, on my browser (Firefox 3.0.3), the new "business postbox" is showing up as a large dark red teardrop icon, the sort that you get when you are adding a new postbox.
OK. Thank you for putting
OK. Thank you for putting last collection times in separate field(s).
I've added a "voluntary" box, which is inside a branch of Sainsbury's. I'm not sure if you want these included.