Location tagging broken/restricted?

Site Discussions
1

I wanted to post a write up of a new restaurant. When I go to enter its location, instead of simply typing an address, I’m made to search for the address. Unfortunately, this place is new enough that ‘LocationIQ’, (which powers this “service”) doesn’t seem to have this place in their database. So it’s either don’t enter a location (dumb) or select the only choice that comes up, a Starbucks that shares the shopping center (dumber).

IMHO, this ‘feature’ is a solution to a problem that didn’t need solving. I can type, or cut-and-paste an address just fine. Is this feature mandatory? This is definitely a change from the way things previously functioned.

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2

I have had this issue, and it is very frustrating.

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3

personally, don’t do “tags” because . . .

my experience has shown - pretty much Fori wide . . . one can only choose from a drop down list of existing “tags” - one cannot “create a new tag”

which works if one lives in the biggest/second biggest city in the world, but for mere mortals, most of the time the existing/approved/available “tags” just simply don’t apply.

not ever seen a forum management that made every city in the country as “tag” -
or “dish”, , , , for that matter . . .

4

The only time I tag is when I create a new monthly thread for the WFD threads, but that doesn’t require a location.

I did have some odd difficulty trying to add a location to my thread on the BOS board for Brine Oyster Bar. I HAD the address, but I couldn’t copy/pasta it in. I had to do that same search that @Lectroid did. And it came up with something weird. Can’t recall but I think I just ignored the LocationID; didn’t need it as my subject line at “Brine Oyster Bar - Newburyport” in it, so people would know where it was.

5

It’s a real shame users can’t add new tags when the one needed doesn’t exist here (yet).

6

Can you clarify what you meant by search instead of type? For example, I start typing the address, and what pops up is autocompleted address available for choosing.

{3A3B2BCE-7179-4960-BD34-694B0EB3273D}
{3A3B2BCE-7179-4960-BD34-694B0EB3273D}1290×680 49.8 KB

Are you saying that the address doesn’t exist with LocationIQ? or the establishment doesn’t exist with LocationIQ?

No, it has always been optional.

7

Yes. I start typing the address, and I’m offered a ‘choice’ to select whatever established location is available: in this case, a Starbucks that shares a strip-mall structure with the restaurant.

The place in question is

Lin’s Dumplings, 5539 H St Unit 50, Sacramento, CA 95819

Try to put in its location in a new post, and only the Starbucks comes up.

I am unable to type in anything ‘freehand’. You can ONLY select a location that LocationIQ already knows.

I’d LOVE for this ‘feature’ to go away. It’s one of those “making things easier just makes things harder” things.

8

Same - so since it’s optional, maybe ignore that part, and just input the address within the body of your post.

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9

Sure. But (imho) a better solution is to get rid of the LocationIQ “service” entirely, and allow us to put in the address into the location tag the way it worked previously.

This is just breaking something by attempting a ‘fix’ that no one needed or asked for.

10

I see what you are saying.

The location plugin, which was written not by the core forum software team, but by a developer who’s doing this as a side hobby. Over the years, the lack of funding, and the amount of work that was needed to keep up with the core forum software led to some bugs introduced. In my opinion, the plugin used to be more user friendly, but a bit less so now. Since the plugin is open-source, there really isn’t any influence that we have on the direction of the plugin unless we contribute to the development in the form of either 1) technical expertise to improve the code or 2) money to get the dev interested amongst the many projects he’s handling.

In this case, what you are experiencing is not a bug per se, but rather the mapping from the provider- LocationIQ, just isn’t the greatest when Google Map API set the bar so high with near real time updates of all businesses, pretty much over the entire world. Since day one my preference is always to use Google Map API if that’s available as a choice for its mapping accuracy, but it has never been available. The plugin traditionally favors OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Leaflet over Google Maps for several philosophical and practical reasons. The mapping providers (location_iq, mapbox, mapquest, mapzen, nominatim, opencagedata) are providers with various tradeoffs in accuracy and completeness, and sometimes just have issues to simply match an address to one in their database.

I can certainly test the providers again to see if any one of them has become better over the last few years. We used to use Mapquest, but about 5 years ago their mapping capability within this plugin took a dive. The hardest part of course, is since this is a global forum, the mapping provider has to be able to map global locations somewhat satisfactorily everywhere, and what i found in the past was, its just a bit of hit and miss for all of them.

If you ask me what the ideal UI for this functionality is, it’d be that we only need to enter a few address characters for the API to autocomplete and find the exact business, with the full address displayed in the topic heading. Or even better, the software itself just maps the location automatically based on context. But as you can see, we are pretty far from that, and will never get there without a commercial solution that isn’t available to the plugin.

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11

That’s really interesting. Thank you for the detailed breakdown.

Is there a specific advantage we get using a location API like this? Is that the way we would (presumably) get a “search by location” map that would link directly to corresponding writeups?

12

It’s not really a choice. the plugin just asks to pick a mapping provider. The mapping provider takes the addresses we enter and presumably map it to a point on the map. I think it’s just a mechanism to ensure input quality and clean up typos, street name inconsistencies etc.

Those mapped topics will then be displayed in this map, so anyone can use to search for a topic for a specific location: