Re: New Developer Locations map available
Hi James,
On 04/08/07, James Treacy <treacy@debian.org> wrote:
> Hello web guys.
> I hope there are still some people here who remember me. :)
Sure :)
> Having never been keen on the Debian Developer Locations map(*), I
> decided it was time to create something better. Please take a look at
> http://people.debian.org/~treacy/developer-locations.html
> I'd like to hear what others think of it.
>
> The cool thing about this is that it uses google maps so it allows
> you to zoom in on areas you are interested in. Notice how clustering
> reduces the number of markers in areas of high concentration of
> developers (necessary or the map is too slow). As you zoom in the
> density decreases and fewer markers are visible on the screen so more
> are displayed.
I like it very much, it is so cool. Personally I have been trying to
do the same thing but had been stuck at the clustering problem. I've
tried yours, initially markers are clustered well, but after a few
zoom in and out and panning, the clustering fails to work, and then
lots of red markers are shown instead, causing my browser to grind to
a halt.
>
> Of course, being able to zoom in makes mistakes in the data more
> obvious. In particular, there are a number of people who claim to
> live in the water. To be fair, some of those near the coast may have
> entered a correct location but rounding has placed them on the wrong
> side of the coastline.
>
> To help developers get their coordinates in the correct format
> and check to see the effect of rounding on their location I also
> created http://people.debian.org/~treacy/coordinate-lookup.html .
> I think this should be linked from the web site in
> http://www.debian.org/devel/developers.loc (and some of the other
> options for generating coordinates removed).
>
> As an aside, I think that [+-]ddd.ddddd should be the only format
> mentioned for the format of coordinates. Looking through the developer
> coordinates, I noticed too many people make mistakes in generating or
> entering other formats (what does an angle of 5924 mean?).
>
> If there is interest in using this on the web site, I'd like to wait
> a few weeks before switching. I will be contacting developers with
> questionable coordinates and would like to give them a chance to fix
> them. A few questionable locations on the current map does not look
> too bad but I have found over 40 problems when using the new map.
>
> (*)I feel free to criticize the map as I originally wrote the scripts to
> generate it.
>
> --
> James Treacy
> treacy@debian.org
I hope this map can replace the current one in the future, after all
the bugs are flushed out.
I'd also like developer names to be shown for the markers too, but
people will start to think about the privacy issues... and currently
db.debian.org doesn't report developers' coordinates to the general
public, doing so may require some kind of changes...
Anthony Wong
Reply to: