POI Types & Confusion
 

This post originally started as a reply to the following, but expanded so I decided to make it it's own thread:

Amen, GM9. I see so very many POIs that are miscategorized, duplicates, or just plain don't belong. I try to whack them as I find them, but the current system is somewhat... cumbersome to fix a POI. It takes 3 form submissions to finally mark it bad once you're at it's page (which takes another form submission of the number). Have to change multiple things? 3 more submissions per thing. But anyway, you could consider me a volunteer to help update POIs as well.

Also, out of curiosity: Is there an "official" posted policy for random "!" spawns and other POI types? I can see the page icon for specific ones (like those used in the 3 RoK language books) but for random collection !'s they just clutter up the map to me. I see on the POI submission/update that it says only Fixed location ones, but there are still plenty of random ones as well ;)

I think that is one major source of confusion. What are the guidelines to choose whether to use one icon type or another, now that there are so many types. What's the difference between a "Door" and a "Zone" type? And I assume "Overland" is supposed to be EQ1-style zonings (i.e. location activated zonings, not clicks) and yet I see them used plenty of places where you have to physically click. Users submitting POIs are given a huge list to choose from, and with only short (sometimes unclear) guidelines for when to use each it's not surprising to me that so many are inconsistently labeled. Do keep in mind this isn't a rant against you folks that work on EQ2MAP, just a suggestion for improvement. You can even consider that me volunteering to help out if you'd like me to help =).

Some examples of possible simplification would be... Change the green/red doors to be "Zone" and "Instance" respectively. Thus any Green door would correspond to a click-to-zone (i.e. the gates into NQ from Antonica, for example) while any Red door would be a zone in to an instance (heroic OR raid, just so long as it is an instanced zone). Another one is the bevy of quest start/update options... which become an issue for NPCs that both offer and update quests. I think the descriptions for those are pretty well done, but I think there might be a more simpler way if the submit page defaulted to a simpler one that asked questions to determine the type.

What I mean by that, is it would first ask you what you are submitting: An NPC, a clickable object, a Zone, etc. And then based on that it would ask another question (done via some pretty simple Javascript) until it determines the exact POI type for the user. That would have the benefit of not requiring so many pageloads to submit one POI Keep the old method, and perhaps give logged-in users an option to use the advanced (current). I could probably whip up a demonstration of what I mean this weekend on my personal site.

Let me know your thoughts on that, folks. I willing to back my suggestions with code, and discuss this stuff further =)

I think we can make you a Moderator lordebon, but i need to talk to eq2map team first :)

About the zone types im not sure my self, 90% of the types are from SOE as we import them.
But your right , we need to define when to use what type.
And a inprovment to the type descritions is needed to :P

Great suggestions. We need more diversity with the POIs to differentiate between one another.

Let me know if you need an extra hand with anything.

I'll agree on that. It's easier to do if you are a mod though. If you have suggestions on how to improve this jnils and I can take a look to make it better. All that takes time though. Ideally I'd have the whole process done with a dynamically updating page ajax style.

Yeah we don't want them, but people will still post them thinking they are fixed location, or just not paying attention.

Common sense mostly, but we can try to make the names on the site more, well, descriptive.

Actually I thought that ZONE was a deprecated type, i.e. users cannot select it. But you are right they can. I think we should change that, we don't need more than one type for this. I'll discuss with jnils.

As jnils mentioned we import SOE's POIs and the problem is there is no apparent difference between the door and zone. SOE's instace zone-in POIs come as both "door" and "zone" types. We haven't yet figured out any pattern to this distinction.

For the reason mentioned above the "official" POIs are problematic in this respect. But does the distinction really matter? If you think it does your system is good though.

multitype POIs are a real issue, I'm more and more starting to think that we need to allow users to assign multiple types to a POI.

I like that, but probably only as an option. Experienced users may prefer the dropdown since it will be faster for them.

Sounds great, thanks. I think we'll have to discuss not only to make you a mod but also to let you work on the frontend. Keep in mind that the pages should still work from the ingame browser though.

Agreed on the Ajax-y version. From what I've seen (and from my knowledge of HTML/PHP) there is no reason that it should take that many page loads before it finally submits to a database.


Agreed that most are common sense, with some exceptions...

... like the many types of Zones.

Agreed.

Agreed again, although I think it would first take SOE to make the distinction, otherwise it would add confusion between EQ2MAP / non-EQ2MAP.

Agreed again there. One thing that comes to mind for that are the two sets of quest icons -- The difference between offers/updates a quest for placed items makes some sense, but "Gives quest" and "Updates quest" for NPCs is almost splitting hairs to me.

Agreed again. I was thinking to have it as a default for new users, but have a simple option to set to always use the advanced (dropdown) menu.

Sounds good to me =). And from what I've seen, the ingame browser should have no issues with a little bit of Javascript, but I would certainly test it there ;)

I don't think its to many steps as it is only 2.

First step is the submission page where you fill in you data.

Second step is for review , here is all data checked if its has a Name a valid loc and if it fits onto the map. If not you are sent back to submission page. You can also see it on map. Done. :)

All this is to prevent to many faulty POI's as you can't delete a submitted POI your self, this is to prevent evil forces to delete POI's from DB , has happend before.

A two step process would be ok. But try to do a complete Report POI for a /loc change as a normal user:

1. Click ReportPOI and enter POI number
2. First problem: figure out that you need to select "/loc Change" in the dropdown of the "Comments" section but that the comment textbox is irrelevant.
3. press submit comment
4. Now fill in the new /loc. Again you get the same comment textbox you already had on the page before.
5. press Review.
6. press Save Comment
7. During the Review process you saw that for old POIs the poitype is empty but since the dropdown was grayed out you could not fix it. Therefore back to step one, fill out the form, submit, review, save.
8. Oh crap, you just overwrote your /loc Change report. (it's still in the comments but mods can't see it anymore) :o

There you go, this system is in dire need of an overhaul for normal users.

Agree, the report system is not good, think we need to change that.
As of now its comment based, that is not good as only 1 comment can be made that shows up for mod , think you should be aible to change all values .
Ones changed it should be locked until reviewed by a mod.
Comments should be separated from changes.

I have a few questions about the POIs too.

In a lot of the city zones there are new POIs submitted by SOE. I assume these were created by Sony on the default map and imported into the eq2map database. In a lot of cases these duplicate older user submitted POIs.

I have started working my way through the Qeynos city zones flagging the extra ones for removal. I can only manage about one zone per night (about 15-20 POIs flagged) due to the current reporting system being painfully slow.

Anyway, are there any guidelines about which should be removed? In most cases i am flagging the non-SOE one to be removed but in some cases (like the SQ player housing POIs for example) there is additional info that would be nice to have. Obviously one should be removed, but which?

Also, how much detail should be included on the POI's? I have seen a few that basicly have entire quest writeups in the details and personally I think that is FAR too much. My opinion would be to have the Quest Name and that would be about it. But, what is the official view?

If there are duplicate POIs (provided by default or EQ2Map) you should report them. While there are POIs that have been added by SoE as default, just wait until a moderator reviews your POIs and approves them.

Thanks Liandra, I had already noticed the huge amount of reports from you, really helpful. We are currently looking at improving the reporting system (lordebon volunteered for that).

In the meantime in view of all the work you are already doing in helping out I took the liberty at making you a moderator for the EQ2MAPs website. Congratulations. :) You will notice that editing/deleting POIs is a bit easier that way (you can directly edit/delete POIs).

On to your questions:

• all POIs that are marked as being submitted by "-SOE-" are regularly imported by a script we wrote directly from SOE's POIs.
• we agree that in most cases it would be nice to keep the additional info contained in user submitted POIs
• currently the problem is that our code will overwrite any modifications to SOE POis the next time we import them. We are currently discussing this and may disable this in the future. But at the moment if you want to keep user submitted information you should actually mark the -SOE- POI as bad and keep the user submitted POI (probably with SOE's /loc, since it will probably be more exact)
• With respect to the contents of the description personally I would agree that entire quest writeups are too much, but some information in addition to the quest name may be useful (e.g. necessary prerequesite, previous quest steps, spawn times, stuff like that).

If there are any further questions or in case of doubt just ask, always easier to discuss issues beforehand than to fix them after the fact. ;)

Working on a new report system, but as i don't have much spare time at the moment it may take a wile :(
But the new system will be better (and faster) for the users and moderators :)

Moderators cannot approve a pending poi, but can edit/delete it, is this intended?

I thought lordebon wanted to help out with that?

Go here: http://maps.eq2interface.com/mod.php...n=list_pending, there you need to click edit at the right side for each of them in order to review and eventually approve/reject the changes.

I see now. I have to click edit on the POI list under function. If I click on the individual POI to see all comments and such, then edit wont let me change the status. That's sort of weird imo.

Thats because the moderator uses a compare window that list new and old values.

The Moderator link is at the bottom right of the eq2map website as i told you.

I did ask you if it was ok if i did it this Monday ;)

Oh you can do whatever you want. :D I only meant that if you have little time I think lordebon offered to help out, that's all.

Thanks gm9. that does make it a lot easier.

I think for the time being I will just focus on the obvious duplicate POIs in the city zones. Once they are done I will go back through and look at the iffy ones.

Possibly by then you guys will have come up with a better solution anyway. :cool:

I have been editing the ones with unnecessary and long descriptions. Making it short and simple, retaining the same info, is much better.