Paul James's dashboard

Paul James replied on July 28, 2009 21:00 to the question "How to remove dupe?" in to.uri.st:

It's by design, once an item is removed, it's gone for good, so this is designed to give time for items that have been mis-tagged to be spotted

Paul James replied on July 27, 2009 21:53 to the problem "Can't see the map" in to.uri.st:

The problem appears to be the client geocoder not always working and/or returning a geocoded result object. My check in the site JS only looks for the existence of an object, unfort, null in JS identifies itself as an object even though it's not. So i've beefed up the check to explicitly look for null and not bomb out on that error. Code up online now, give it a try.

Paul James replied on July 27, 2009 21:51 to the idea "Take a look at openstreetmap.org project for map tiles source" in to.uri.st:

The OpenStreetMap project is awesome, I've used their data on other projects but never their JS API. It'd certainly be worth looking at in the future if it provides everything we need.

Paul James replied on July 18, 2009 17:29 to the problem "Can I look up a cluster?" in to.uri.st:

You're right, there are two ways of getting a bounding box of places. The first is using a URL like http://to.uri.st/places.xml?lat=51.13... which explicitly defines the box.

The other is with a URL like http://to.uri.st/places.xml?loc=51.17... which defines a center point and a zoom level.

The latter is the way the that the clusters are defined in the XML responses. So the solution is to use the second format from the outset rather than the former but with a suitable zoom level for the data you want (with a zoom level of 1 being the whole world with each increase halving the size of the area).

The index XML file should probably be used to reflect this.

Paul James replied on July 18, 2009 12:50 to the problem "Can I look up a cluster?" in to.uri.st:

Hi enigmatic,

The API provides two objects you can get access to, a list of places within a bounding box (both attractions and clusters) and then attractions themselves.

So given the URL http://to.uri.st/places.xml?lat=51.13... I see that I have a number of attractions and a number of clusters. The clusters are purely URLs of more lists of places but at a narrower zoom level. Following the URL given in a cluster gives me another list of the attractions (and possibly clusters) within that clusters area.

I hope this makes sense.

Paul James marked one of Yurii Soldak's replies in to.uri.st as useful. Yurii Soldak replied to the problem "Can't add an attraction".

Paul James replied on November 22, 2008 14:41 to the problem "Can't add an attraction" in to.uri.st:

Yury, there was a problem with the URL field validation which I have now fixed. Clear your browser cache and give it another try and let me know if you're successful.

Thanks again for reporting this and for submitting an attraction, St. Petersburg is one of those places I'd really like to travel to one day, but we currently don't have any attraction information for any of Russia.

Paul James replied on November 22, 2008 14:00 to the problem "Can't add an attraction" in to.uri.st:

Hi Yury,

I've just taken a look and you're right, something has gone a little amiss with the attraction creation.

I'll take a look at it and let you know when it's sorted. Thanks for reporting the problem.

Paul.

Paul James replied on June 14, 2008 09:50 to the question "How do I register?" in to.uri.st:

You don't need to register, in fact there is no way to register on to.uri.st, we have no user accounts, passwords, or any of that nonsense.

So how does it work? Well, to.uri.st is a wiki, it allows anyone to edit any attraction data on the site. Each attraction keeps a history of it's edits so that anyone can see what has been and gone before and easily revert any changes that are inappropriate.

When you edit an attraction, there is a "name" field. If you fill this in, this name will be used to identify your edit as belonging to you and allow people to look at all edits made by that name. Of course, anyone could pretend to be you by using your name, but we think we can trust each other not to lie (we also hold the IP address the edit came from, just in case).

So what's holding you up? Get editing.

Paul James asked a question in to.uri.st on June 14, 2008 09:41:

How do I register?

How do I register on to.uri.st to add or edit attractions?

Paul James replied on June 11, 2008 19:39 to the question "I can't see the changes of my edit to an attraction?" in to.uri.st:

Don't worry, your edit hasn't been lost.

For performance reasons, we ask your Web browser to cache the data sent from to.uri.st. This makes the site nice and snappy, but means that if you've made an edit, you may still see the old version until your browser cache expires.

We have some cunning hackery in our JavaScript code to hopefully avoid this problem, but it's not always successful. To check to make sure your edit appeared, go to the history page of the attraction and you should see your edit listed. We ask your browser and ISP caches to never cache history pages so that the latest history is always visible to you.

Paul James asked a question in to.uri.st on June 11, 2008 19:36:

I can't see the changes of my edit to an attraction?

I can't see the changes of my edit to an attraction, what happened, did I lose it?

Paul James replied on June 11, 2008 19:30 to the question "Adding an attraction" in to.uri.st:

Sure, to.uri.st is all about collecting everybodies travel experiences and we want you to add your gems.

Adding an attraction is easy. Navigate the main map to where the attraction is and click the "Add attaction" link at the top right of the map. You'll get a form to fill in.

Add the attractions name, a text description, and select the attactions type from the drop down. Try to be as informative as you can in the description, include information about what the attraction is, why it's worth visiting, how to get there, etc. We have content guidelines on our wiki - http://tourist.wikispaces.com/content...

Please don't cut and paste information from other sources that you don't have permission to take the content from.

If you enter your name into the form, this edit will be accredited to you, allowing other people to know you made the addition in the attraction edit history and on the recent changes page.

Lastly, don't be afraid of adding or editing attractions, if you do something wrong, someone will soon spot it and fix it. After all, we're all in this together.

Paul James asked a question in to.uri.st on June 11, 2008 19:09:

Adding an attraction

An attraction I know about isn't on to.uri.st, can I add it and if so how do I go it?

Paul James replied on June 11, 2008 19:07 to the question "Where does the attraction data come from?" in to.uri.st:

The original attraction data is scraped from tourist information sites for local regions. This is done by our spider, you can find out more information on our wiki - http://tourist.wikispaces.com/spider

Individual attraction data can be added by any user via a Wiki style interface on the web site, and existing attractions can be edited to fix errors or improve the content.

Paul James asked a question in to.uri.st on June 11, 2008 19:06:

Where does the attraction data come from?

Where does all the attraction data on the site come from and how did it get on there?