Is AQ deleting locations from old clues or something?

In most cases, it's a temporary thing. In case you all are interested in my exciting life, I am currently working on the world's most tedious, boring job. =)

Right now, AQ is automatically running through 30,000 box listings trying to associate park names with locations. It's not an exact science, however, especially when park names are spelled wrong or people added additional information in it ("this box is retired!"). So I'm walking through every single letterbox, one at a time, trying to verify and check locations. There are about 30,000 distinctly different listings, however, and I am one man, so it'll take a few weeks for me to straighten everything out completely.

In any case, I'm still in the midsts of the "Big Update," all while trying to keep Atlas Quest up and running at the same time. Most of the missing addresses will return over time, but it will take time.

The map links--I've said many times now that they will not work very precisely. I need to update the links to use coordinates rather than addresses since, as many of you have noticed, they aren't too smart about finding parks and many locations. At best, you shouldn't expect more than the correct city from those links. At least not until I have a chance to fix it, but I felt it was more important to spend my time getting the location information back in action first.

You are more than welcome to help out by manually going through your boxes and listing the correct, official name of the park or location, perhaps with the necessary hints to the geocoder (as described on the location page) to help out. This is not necessary since I'll be doing that eventually myself, but it will take me weeks to get through all these locations manually. The more that you can fix yourselves, however, the quicker I can get through the rest.

I'm pretty much going through locations more-or-less randomly. Whatever order the database pulls them up for me, and I gave no directions about what order to do that.

I should also point out.... All information someone needs to find your box should be in the clue itself. The print friendly version of clues, for instance, don't necessarily print extra details like locations, or the PDA versions of clues may not have other additional information. Please don't skimp on information in your clues because it's included somewhere else--some people go off with nothing more than the clue and if you included important information somewhere else, they will have trouble finding your box. The address and location details were never meant to replace detailed clues.

In any case, if you notice the park name or address of your boxes are not listed with your clues anymore, not to worry, I will get around to fixing it. But it'll take time. You can fix it yourselves if you want, but I'll get to it eventually. =)

-- Ryan

You are truly an amazing one man machine!!! Thanks!

The Great Green One indeed. :o)

There are about 30,000 distinctly different listings, however, and I am one man, so it'll take a few weeks for me to straighten everything out completely.

In case you're wondering, I've set it up to run 30 locations per hour, or 720 per day. I might slow it down a bit soon, though, because I've had a hard time keeping up with the geocoder manually. So yes, it'll likely be several weeks before I've finished completely updating locations.

-- Ryan

That's 42 days if you don't slow the pace!!! The numbers make my head hurt! (as does the thought of tracking such a huge effort for 42 more days!!!)
As I said, you are amazing!

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It's not an exact science, however, especially when park names are spelled wrong or people added additional information in it ("this box is retired!").

Would it be helpful to you if everyone who wrote "MIA/MISSING/RETIRED/etc" in the title, would remove those words and update the pull-down status to "unavailable or unknown"? I know there are boxes that have updates written in the clue text, but the pull-down status does not reflect the same. My favorite searches include all active and unknown boxes in an area, but when I print and read the clues, I find many unavailable boxes in the active area. I know it doesn't matter to everyone, but it is one of my pet peeves. If I can't find it NOW, I don't want to see the clues now. You can always go back and mark it available when you re-activate it. Then I'll see the active clues when I run my favorite search.

Now is the time for me to check all my boxes for typographical errors. Not spelling something correctly can eliminate your box when someone does a keyword search. For example, if you spell cemetery like cemetAry, I wouldn't see your clues when I ask for all the boxes containing cemetery in the clues.

Just some random thoughts on a rainy day,

~speedsquare

I can go through and update all my clues as appropriate... am I correct in assuming that if the original location is showing then there are no problems? The only problems are with the ones that are not showing on the clue page?

Cheers!
Rhea

but what about trails that can have several starting points?

I'd mention it in the clue, definitely, but if you really want to force it into the "address" part of the location, you can do so with "hints." Type in the name you want to show, then a comma, then the intersection where that location is at.

AQ is able to "learn" new locations this way. That's what most of my time is spent doing--looking up addresses the geocoder doesn't know and entering them in manually myself.

-- Ryan

am I correct in assuming that if the original location is showing then there are no problems?

If the original location is showing, it's good. It was either fine as it was, or AQ (or I!) have already processed the listing. It's only if the location is not showing that AQ (and I!) will still need to check it out.

-- Ryan