Problem with Google Maps and the description of locations March 6, 2011 3:49 PM Subscribe
Problems with entering cities/suburbs with using the Google Maps plugin in IRL.
In the last few meetups organised in Australian cities using IRL, there've been confusing issues about the location information displayed. Australian suburbs have a four-digit postcode, and the plugin displays the suburb in IRL purely as a location without an indication of where it is. IRL either displays a suburb name which may not be specific to a city, or a city name, which may have many identical street addresses (in different suburbs).
For example, I entered this meetup in January which displayed as Glebe/Australia, which is technically correct, but potentially confusing---there's a Glebe in Hobart too. Eugenen has entered this meetup for next week for the Glenmore Hotel in "Sydney", but the map displays an entirely different location in the western suburbs, a hour's drive or more from where people are actually meeting.
Is it possible to refine the location information that goes into each IRL entry, or could we have a more free-form field to describe locations?
In the last few meetups organised in Australian cities using IRL, there've been confusing issues about the location information displayed. Australian suburbs have a four-digit postcode, and the plugin displays the suburb in IRL purely as a location without an indication of where it is. IRL either displays a suburb name which may not be specific to a city, or a city name, which may have many identical street addresses (in different suburbs).
For example, I entered this meetup in January which displayed as Glebe/Australia, which is technically correct, but potentially confusing---there's a Glebe in Hobart too. Eugenen has entered this meetup for next week for the Glenmore Hotel in "Sydney", but the map displays an entirely different location in the western suburbs, a hour's drive or more from where people are actually meeting.
Is it possible to refine the location information that goes into each IRL entry, or could we have a more free-form field to describe locations?
Is that enough information to make the location unique?Yes, as long as "New South Wales" is displayed, but even then it's confusing.
What IRL and Google don't seem to have for Australian addresses (or indeed anywhere outside the United States, I think) are indications of city or State as well as country. If someone for instance enters details for a meetup in inner-city Chicago, you can see on the sidebar of irl.metafilter.com that it's for Chicago Illinois, rather than for "Near North Side, USA", which could be in Houston or Omaha.
Eugenen's done the right thing by putting his meetup in "Sydney" rather than "The Rocks", but the map has got the address wrong by forty kilometres.
it might be good to drop Eugenen a lineDone, and I've done that also within the IRL, but here's the thing---people are often going to be using IRL to have meetups in places with which they're unfamiliar.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:00 PM on March 6, 2011
...people are often going to be using IRL to have meetups in places with which they're unfamiliar.
True, and we're hoping the community will help people get things right. There's no technological fix for the problem of people not being able to verify the location on the map.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:22 PM on March 6, 2011
True, and we're hoping the community will help people get things right. There's no technological fix for the problem of people not being able to verify the location on the map.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:22 PM on March 6, 2011
So there still isn't a PEBKAC patch?
posted by UbuRoivas at 12:27 AM on March 7, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by UbuRoivas at 12:27 AM on March 7, 2011 [1 favorite]
I fixed it. Pretty sure it was a Google Maps issue, not anything to do with the cite. Thanks for the heads up.
posted by eugenen at 12:53 AM on March 7, 2011
posted by eugenen at 12:53 AM on March 7, 2011
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If you click the icon on the Google Map, you'll get the full address of the location. For example, when I click the icon for your meetup, I see:
Australian Youth Hotel
63 Bay St
Glebe New South Wales 2037, Australia
Is that enough information to make the location unique?
Eugenen has entered this meetup for next week for the Glenmore Hotel in "Sydney", but the map displays an entirely different location in the western suburbs...
We're relying on the people posting the meetups to make sure the map is displaying the correct info. We don't have any way to know if a location is or isn't correct. We ask posters to verify that the map is correct and ask them to rephrase the address if it isn't. In this case, it might be good to drop Eugenen a line and let them know the map is off. They can edit the meetup details to fix things up. If there's a problem with Google not finding the correct location, I can take a look and see if there's a way to get the right location.
... could we have a more free-form field to describe locations?
The post body is the place for extended descriptions. You can add as much text as you'd like to describe things that the address or map doesn't show in the post itself.
posted by pb (staff) at 5:33 PM on March 6, 2011