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albagilaFrom the Writers Corner: New names, new content and site feedback
Hi EDO,
Thought you might like a round-up of what’s been happening here in Writer’s Corner….
1) First, a Who’s Who.
Content Coordinator: Me (Imogen). It’s my job to make sure that the content going live is high-quality. This is now a single role, rather than being split between Ute and me, so I am working with all our writers - except for the Ambassadors who work directly with Rafael.
Core Writers: Barry, Grant and Fereal
New faces: Aimee, Maura, Rod and (as of next month) Mena and Manuela.
This makes a team of eight, plus Ambassadors like Radha who is uploading GREAT content at a rapid rate!
Barry is continuing to populate the Hong Kong location guide with content, and Rafael and I are sharing head-scratching sessions over the various spreadsheets, guides and potential screencasts that need to be combined in an easy-to-use Starter Book for EDO new-comers… It’s a work in progress!
3) Some site feedback (@tech i guess?)
These are all thanks to Rod, who has been diligently writing for Tokyo, New York and Vancouver, as well as others I am sure! Please note that the new site looks great, and is a huge step forward. Criticisms are given in the spirit of improvement and congratulations 
- Under “Fast Facts” for each city, “inhabitants” is spelled incorrectly (typo)
- The population figures in “Fast Facts” would be more readable if they had commas (example: 7,000,000 vs. 7000000). I realize that many Europeans don’t use commas in that way, but since it’s an English-language website, it’s probably wise to follow the conventions of English. French speakers will still get the idea.
- Under population, it might be an idea to break out the figures for the city and the metropolitan area that surrounds it. I tried earlier, but the software wouldn’t let me. Paris, for example, has a population of something like 2 million, but the metro area is something like 11 million — big difference. It could look something like: Population: 2,000,000 (Metro: 11,000,000). “Metro” could show up in gray in editing mode, and not show up later if the editor chose not to put in a figure.
- I’m not sure how helpful it is to get information on a country’s languages when you’re looking at a particular city within that country, for the simple reason that there are wide regional variations. For example, if you look at the entry for New York City, it tells you that Hawaiian is an official language of the state of Hawaii. True enough, and very important info if you’re planning to travel to Hawaii. But few people going to NYC would care. The problem, as I’m sure you’re aware, is that the overall country info is being rolled into the city info, which saves time from a programming POV, but isn’t helpful to travelers.
- When searching for “Victoria, BC”, the search results provide a long list of Victorias, each of which is identical. There’s no way of knowing which link to click. A solution might be to provide at least the country or regional info, as well (I think it was like that before the upgrade, but I’m not sure).
David Garcia Watkins, 
Alfreda and 7 others are discussing. 
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Jim and one other person are discussing. 
Thomas and 9 others are discussing. 
David Garcia Watkins 6:18 pm on November 19, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Imogen, I took care of the two issues with “Fast Facts”: fixed inhabitants and formatted numbers … it will probably be deployed tomorrow.
Imogen 7:15 pm on November 19, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi David… Wow, that’s fast! Buenos Noches, y gracias
David Garcia Watkins 3:32 pm on November 20, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I’ve discussed the other tech issues with the team and we have to leave metro population and country languages for a later stage.
As for searching Victoria BC, we will be adding breadcrumbs to search results so that the difference between Victorias is obvious
Mathias 7:41 pm on November 19, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks for this nice introduction Imogen!
Rafael 6:52 am on November 20, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
You have done great work, such an update/overview is very necessary not to get lost in the writers corner. Thanks!
Anne 7:38 am on November 20, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thank you Imogen, all this sounds great!
otto 1:18 pm on November 20, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Good & clear words!
AhsanShankar 2:21 pm on November 20, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Nice article and thanks for sharing
Alfreda 3:22 pm on November 20, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
thanks Imogen, criticisms much appreciated. @usability will pick up the other points.
Alfreda 4:14 pm on November 20, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
“When searching for “Victoria, BC”, the search results provide a long list of Victorias, each of which is identical. There’s no way of knowing which link to click. A solution might be to provide at least the country or regional info, as well (I think it was like that before the upgrade, but I’m not sure).”
>> @ tech can be pls help check this? I thought we always display City, Region, Country as search results. I totally missed this in the review, can we pls have this implemented soon?
david 5:58 pm on November 20, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
@alfreda Can you review the search results in the test server and let me know your opinion?
alfreda 8:59 am on November 21, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
@david: thanks. the path helps but it’s extra information. Can we make the actual blue link include the longer region and country? and then remove the path. so
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (whole thing in blue link)
Category: City travel guide
also, one more question, how are these results ordered now? any criteria in particular?
David 7:54 pm on November 21, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Try now, its looking much better. As for order, I believe its relevance.
Thomas 8:02 pm on November 21, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
i personally really like the foursquare solution http://foursquare.com/search?q=earth&x=0&y=0 just by showing the categories it becomes much easier and faster to grasp
alfreda 4:51 pm on November 22, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
@David: thx much. exactly what i’d like to have.. at least for search Victoria, B.C., this works.
Can we push this live first? so we don’t have all the duplicates that people don’t know what to do with now?
Since you’re so good at this, here’s some more :p
1, we had said if there is an exact match to a location, we would direct people to the TG directly (like how Wikipedia does it). so if I type Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (and there’s one and only exact match), then that TG page will show up directly, won’t see search. possible? We can do this ONLY for Location, might be too complicated for places.
2, I tried search for “Hotels in Munich”, “Hotels, Munich”, but am only seeing places but not Munich > Hotels category, can that come up as the first item in that search case?
again.. great work.. thanks much
david 1:04 pm on November 23, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Its live already: http://www.earth.org/search?q=lisbon
I know Slobodan is planning some fine tuning of search results, I will make sure these comments reach him.
radha 9:43 am on November 25, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
hey imogen,teh style guide looks really neat and helpful ~ how to login for the googlesheet? we need the name@earth.org email to login ~