Author Topic: Stats restricted to systems/regions/etc of interest  (Read 14446 times)

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Offline kjslaughter

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Re: Stats restricted to systems/regions/etc of interest
« Reply #30 on: October 17, 2019, 09:44:16 am »
I suck at quoting prior lines in forums, so...

To be clear, I was just saying within North America to finish one thing before starting another.  I don't travel to Europe much myself, but I understand this is an international site.

As another user said, thanks to all of you guys!  I wish there was more I could do to help and try not to complain about work on a volunteer unpaid project.  :-)  The road geek in me is just happy to have a place to log my travels and it adds a new element to my travels to try to clinch roads.

I have lived in Georgia most of my life, so if there is anything I can do to help validate routes in Georgia and adjacent states, I'm happy to do so.  I'm just unsure of the need and what I can do.  If you guys need any sort of donations to help keep servers running too, let me know.

Offline michih

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Re: Stats restricted to systems/regions/etc of interest
« Reply #31 on: October 17, 2019, 12:17:52 pm »
Sure but have you answered questions like "What's the source for this name?"
I missed the answer to my bumps has arrived. Will address.

I also missed it :) I just wanted to know today when you've bumped it last time. And realized that something has happened meanwhile ;)

Offline Jim

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Re: Stats restricted to systems/regions/etc of interest
« Reply #32 on: February 07, 2021, 11:00:49 pm »
Resurrecting this thread as a place to talk about how we might support subsets of TM for users who are not interested in certain systems/regions/etc.  It's come up again in the context of unsigned interstates and others.

Here are a few thoughts from my point of view, thinking of both the data and the web front end.

I don't see how this can be user-based in the sense that user joecool can say that anyone who visits TM and sees my name and stats and maps should only see those based on this subset of TM that I'm interested in.  When joecool wants to see his stats and maps restricted to those in his subset of regions/systems of interest, he would have to set those preferences in his browser.  Anyone would be able to see everyone's overall stats and maps or restricted any way he or she likes.  I think this would satisfy most.

I see this as being totally flexible, restricting things to any combination of systems and regions that you wish.  It might not be simple to select a completely arbitrary subset, but I would want it to be possible.  That said, I expect there would be a fairly small subset of common restrictions (e.g., North America only, everything except usaif, national-level systems only, etc).

There's a lot to think about and implement here.


Offline Jim

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Offline Jim

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Re: Stats restricted to systems/regions/etc of interest
« Reply #34 on: February 09, 2021, 05:33:56 pm »
One thing that's come up in other threads related to this idea is a signed/unsigned flag in the route list for a given system.  I think I'd prefer signed and unsigned to end up in different systems, but I could be convinced otherwise.  One complication of splitting into separate systems is that we could not define a partially-signed route to have a single connected route.  However, if a goal is to allow someone to turn on and off all unsigned routes, having them together in a single connected route would be problematic anyway.

Offline yakra

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Re: Stats restricted to systems/regions/etc of interest
« Reply #35 on: February 09, 2021, 05:35:38 pm »
Maybe just ignore that distinction when looking at connected routes?
Not even saying this idea is necessarily a good one; it's just the first thing that comes to mind
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Offline Jim

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Re: Stats restricted to systems/regions/etc of interest
« Reply #36 on: February 11, 2021, 08:14:50 am »
- There should be enough information in the DB as currently designed and populated to do much if not all of what we want, at least from the point of view of someone looking at the web front end.  Log files generated by the site update process would continue to show stats for all systems for all users.

- The implementation challenges seem to break down into a few categories:

1. How to specify which systems/regions/countries/continents/tiers/etc. should be included and excluded for a given page load.  This would likely be part of the long-planned control panel page (https://github.com/TravelMapping/Web/issues/351). As stated before, I would want to implement this to be completely flexible.  If someone wants all of Europe, only Future interstates and the Nebraska Links and Spurs, and nothing else, they should be able to do that.
2. How to remember that information.
  a. My thought is that it would most likely would be done in a browser cookie or cookies.
  b. I'd like to allow people to save those to these settings to their computer in a config file that could be reloaded if cookies are cleared, loaded into other browsers, shared with other users, etc.
  c. Maybe those config files could be stored in GitHub as a way to select among subsets people have put together based on their own interests.
3. Updating all of the affected SQL queries to limit them to the desired subset of highway data.  A quick count shows 77 tmdb_query calls in TM's php code, and a significant fraction of them will be affected.  It will take some planning to come up with a way to update them all in a consistent and coherent way, and to make sure whatever changes are made to the queries are not only correct, but that the queries do not become significantly slower.

- I think this functionality needs to be in place before any new unsigned systems being discussed in other threads would progress past devel status.  With a compressed semester starting up soon, I am unlikely to work on it before June.  That said, I am very interested in getting this functionality in place and will work on it sooner if time permits.


Offline yakra

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Re: Stats restricted to systems/regions/etc of interest
« Reply #37 on: February 11, 2021, 11:28:11 am »
...and allowing users to "opt out" and not track systems they don't care about.

There's infrastructure for this in place, but our current userpages don't get us all the way there. On region.php & system.php, the maps look OK whether we filter for any combination of 1 or more systems in 1 or more regions. A happy side effect of the way the site works under the hood. The tables are more limited and less customizable though -- region.php always shows all the systems in one region; system.php will filter for any number of regions, but only one system.

Even without a control panel page, I think this would get us most of what we want. If we keep the regions & systems we filter in/out persistent in the URL, we can share URLs on another forum, and someone else can click & open up the same page we're looking at ourselves.

Of course, having a good UI to get there will make the page more usable, but first, there's gotta be something for that UI to direct to, eh?
« Last Edit: February 11, 2021, 11:42:38 am by yakra »
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Offline Duke87

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Re: Stats restricted to systems/regions/etc of interest
« Reply #38 on: February 13, 2021, 01:09:17 am »
This post from the unsigned interstates thread makes me think of something:
I'm not sure that a toggle that would only affect my view would be satisfying... kinda like cleaning up by sweeping the dust under the rug.  Especially as I do link to my page from my website, and because I don't feel like "signing in" to view my page.

The basic stated issue here is that if a user does not care for unsigned highways and has not logged any, simply switching them off on their end will not help when they are sending others a link to their page.

How's this for a suggestion: can we support certain exclusion criteria in the URL? For example maybe if someone appends "&includeunsigned=n" this would resolve the issue of allowing users to share links that will display things as they prefer.

Offline yakra

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Re: Stats restricted to systems/regions/etc of interest
« Reply #39 on: February 13, 2021, 09:18:39 am »
simply switching them off on their end will not help when they are sending others a link to their page.
... How's this for a suggestion: can we support certain exclusion criteria in the URL?
keep the regions & systems we filter in/out persistent in the URL, we can share URLs on another forum
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Offline Jim

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Re: Stats restricted to systems/regions/etc of interest
« Reply #40 on: February 13, 2021, 09:41:58 am »
I think a QS parameter to set the subset would make sense and that QS parameter could be included when sharing links, etc.  However, the implementation paths going forward that I have in mind would not restrict someone coming to TM and viewing user X's stats and maps from setting whatever subset they want. 

Offline yakra

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Re: Stats restricted to systems/regions/etc of interest
« Reply #41 on: February 13, 2021, 10:31:47 am »
"they" meaning the "someone coming to TM", I presume?
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Offline Jim

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Re: Stats restricted to systems/regions/etc of interest
« Reply #42 on: February 13, 2021, 10:34:54 am »
"they" meaning the "someone coming to TM", I presume?

Yes, as I envision it, anyone browsing the site could view anyone's stats and maps with any subset of data they wish.

Offline vdeane

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Re: Stats restricted to systems/regions/etc of interest
« Reply #43 on: February 13, 2021, 04:12:54 pm »
I suppose a question is, how useful is it to view another person's page with systems they are not tracking?  Presumably they wouldn't be marking travels on them, so any stats including them wouldn't necessarily be representative of their travels regardless.  It's not like people are installing GPS devices in their car to log whenever they clinch something.  All the data is self-reported.  We already have this now - there are people who only track certain things (I know of at least one person who didn't track state highways for the longest time, and the only state routes that showed up on his page were those that overlapped with interstates and maybe US routes), and people who haven't updated their page since more systems have been added.

Perhaps a compromise, one that allows the site to avoid user account hassle?
-Users could define in their .list file or in a configuration file the "default" configuration for their page.  This would be used for any visitor who doesn't have their own configuration set or flagged in the URL for external links.
-Users could open a control panel letting them configure things like colors, included/excluded systems, etc. and these settings would be saved in a cookie and would override both site-wide and user defaults.  They could be site for site-wide browsing, for browsing a given user's page, for the current session, or as a default whenever they come back to the site.
-There would also be buttons for reverting both to a user's defaults and the website defaults.
-Users could export configurations to a text file that could then be imported at any time, either for a pre-set view or because something happened to the cookie.

I'm not sure how compatible the rank statistic is with this, but maybe it's not needed?  I think there was someone lamenting the view of the site as a competition in one of the threads.
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position of NYSDOT or its affiliates.