OK. We are going to try this again. I have am trying for a release on the last weekend in April. The new system is doing great with gauges. I know it isn't 100% the same on flow information, but I am hoping that we can get the kinks worked out after release (this mostly just has to do with the fact that we require a max, min and ideal...which I had to force on the system). I know it doesn't have everything everyone has asked for, but it has a lot. I get the entire month of May off from school and will likely spend that month doing emergency fixes and last-minutes tweaks to functionality. What I would like now is just to have people jump back and forth to their river pages. You can log into one site and just switch the www.americanwhitewater.org in your URL to www4.americanwhitewater.org and hit enter and everything should automatically look the same.

Right now anything you do on the new site gets wiped out except things that have to do with gauges (changing a gauge name or location). So, don't monkey with the edit link on a gauge unless you know what you are doing. You can however play with correlations, virtual gauges, edit a river or two, etc... and see how the system works.

If anything looks funny or breaks, please let me know here or on the bug tracker.

Thanks so much for your support,

Ryan



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/09/2009 11:52AM by rgroth.

Login issues fixed. Thanks,

Ryan

Comments RE: beta system

1) Pulling up state by drainage always includes rivers in nearby states sharing drainages.
Old system always showed state abbreviation in leftmost column. (GOOD)
New system does not show state abbreviation. (Not good)

2) Pulling up state by drainage yields a page with a state map on the left.
Old system allowed clicking on map to scroll down to a drainage area in the listing. (GOOD)
New system does not allow click on map to scroll to a drainage area. (Not good)

3) New system takes two lines, which seems it should allow more space for reach name, however,
longer reach names are now being truncated (with ellipses) with plenty blank space after them.

4) New system (with two line listing for each reach) makes it
harder to 'visually group' all the reaches on a given river.

5) Old system 'River Networking' (star icons) aligned nicely in a column between state and river/reach name.
New system puts these after river name (on line 1 of the two line entry for each reach.
This makes it harder to quickly see which reaches I'm 'in the network' for.
It is also completly unclear how I would 'join' the network for a river in the new system.

6) Sort order on new system seems all goofy. (Reaches on a given river are out of sequence.)

7) As I had previously (somewhere . . . an email to Ryan?) commented at length,
While the 'gauge trend' info (so-and-so-many cfs/hr up or down) SEEMS like a great addition,
I think (as currently implemented) it is almost completely worthless and (worse) misleading.

If you have ever CLOSELY watched gauge readings for many rivers at all,
you will see that even while the overall graph is trending upwards (or downwards)
individual readings posted (every 5 or 15 minutes, generally) can be (relatively) all over the place.
Take any two 'random' data points (from an hour apart or whatever) and they can show a 'trend'
which is the reverse of the overall trend shown by the graph.

Without doing some serious 'data smoothing' (averaging 5, 10, 15, or so readings)
and then comparing a 'averaged' reading from one point to some other point,
the value placed on the screen is relatively meaningless as best, and misleading at worst.

8) New system (with two line listing for each reach, with 'gauge trend' directly under the 'Level') makes it
harder to actually see the gauge reading for a given river.

9) Gauge and Relative Level appear to be clickable links, and appear to be intended to 'pop-up' additional information.
However, when I click any of these, I get a little window (with the kayaker 'throwing ends'), but nothing ever appears.

10) Going into edit on a reach (in the new system), the division of information among the tabs seems illogical.
"Main" tab has lat/lng, which seems more like "Location" (the next tab).
"Location" tab has class, length, gradient, agency, all of which seem more like "Main" data.
"Location" tab has gauge description info, which should be in "Flows" tab.

Rob Smage
AW member since 1992, volunteer since 2000, Midwest Regional StreamTeam Editor

Rob,

Interesting comments. I'll add:

1. I've tried opening the site as one who isn't logged in. There's a popup which doesn't say anything. I can click on the "x" to close the popup, and continue surfing the site...but what's the purpose of the popup? Is it to suggest that the intrepid surfer join AW? Or register and log in? (Oooops; as I click around the site, the popup shows up occasionally on other pages. If it has a raison d'etre, great; but that rationale should be clear.

2. In the Tabs, should "Books and Videos" be under "Rivers?" I'd put them under "Library."

3. I'm very happy that the "Email Verification" massage (for those who haven't logged in recently) is more prominent in the new site, showing up in bright colors on every page. That should remove the frequent troubleshooting requests I get from users who havent' verified the e-address recently. (What will I do with the sudden increase in free time?)
The non-member massage reads: "You are not a member of American Whitewater. Support us as a member." Should we be just a bit more polite, with "Please support us as a member," or "Click here to support us as a member?"

4. While editing a reach, I've tried to add a rapid. When I wish to place it with a lat/long coord, the dedicated map comes out all funky, with discontinuous tiling. Not only that, but something's telling me how to add a photo, and I don't know how to close that dialog.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/2009 10:44PM by matt.

In Photos, there's a link in the upper left corner to "Upload Instructions." Unfortunately, it doesn't link to the correct site. It should link to [www.americanwhitewater.org] (or whatever the address will be in the new site). This is a bug in the current system, and I hope it doesn't carry over to the new site.

So, we are talking about the ww2 site, yes?
[www2.americanwhitewater.org]

On the main river database page:
[www2.americanwhitewater.org]
I like seeing the last 10 rivers edited and who edited them. I like seeing who is doing what kinds of edits, so we can inspire each other.


On each California stream reach, in the Credits & Network tab, there are the pictures and bios of Steindorf, O'Keefe and myself. That seems excessive and unnecessary.
[www2.americanwhitewater.org]

Actuary, I believe it's the ww4 site, http://www4.americanwhitewater.org/. For some reason, the 4772 reach, http://www4.americanwhitewater.org/content/River/detail/id/4772/, in the ww4 site isn't the same as the 4772 reach in the ww2 site. (That's strange; is there an explanation for it?) So I checked out another reach in ww4 (the American) and found the same thing.
I saw a similar phenomenon in the Bottom Moose reach, but without the photos. Looks as though we Northeasterners didn't attach photos to our bios.
I agree that listing the photo and life story of each character involved in some way with the river is a little excessive. Interestingly, though the tab is entitled "Credits and Network," clicking on the tab brings up a page with the title, "Credits and History." Maybe both should be titled "Network/Edit History."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/2009 10:26AM by matt.

I just noticed . . . what happened to the automatic shuttle directions (and option to enter any other address to get time/distance/directions to the river)? It seems to be MIA.

Rob Smage
AW member since 1992, volunteer since 2000, Midwest Regional StreamTeam Editor

Thanks for the feedback! I will be addressing these tonight and tomorrow and hope to close most of them out.

Quote:

Old system always showed state abbreviation in leftmost column. (GOOD)
New system does not show state abbreviation. (Not good)

States don't show so much because of the multiple state issue. I am going to modify this to show the first state for a reach.

Quote:

New system does not allow click on map to scroll to a drainage area. (Not good)

Quote:

I just noticed . . . what happened to the automatic shuttle directions (and option to enter any other address to get time/distance/directions to the river)? It seems to be MIA.

I will see what's up.

Quote:

1. I've tried opening the site as one who isn't logged in. There's a popup which doesn't say anything. I can click on the "x" to close the popup, and continue surfing

We pulled this. It was to notify a user that they should register to get lots of extras.

Quote:

2. In the Tabs, should "Books and Videos" be under "Rivers?" I'd put them under "Library."

Very happy to oblige.

Quote:

The non-member massage reads: "You are not a member of American Whitewater. Support us as a member." Should we be just a bit more polite, with "Please support us as a member," or "Click here to support us as a member?"

Yes. Much better.

Quote:

4. While editing a reach, I've tried to add a rapid. When I wish to place it with a lat/long coord, the dedicated map comes out all funky, with discontinuous tiling. Not only that, but something's telling me how to add a photo, and I don't know how to close that dialog.

I'll check this out.



I'll fix this...

Quote:

3) New system takes two lines, which seems it should allow more space for reach name, however,
longer reach names are now being truncated (with ellipses) with plenty blank space after them.

True, I think there was a time I was experimenting with one and two line river lists.

Quote:

4) New system (with two line listing for each reach) makes it
harder to 'visually group' all the reaches on a given river.

I'd like to introduce an option using pure CSS to reduce this to one line for people that want the old system, but that won't make it into production. Any volunteers want to change the CSS?

Quote:

5) Old system 'River Networking' (star icons) aligned nicely in a column between state and river/reach name.
New system puts these after river name (on line 1 of the two line entry for each reach.
This makes it harder to quickly see which reaches I'm 'in the network' for.
It is also completly unclear how I would 'join' the network for a river in the new system.

We have a ton of "status" icons now that when put into columns push the river names off to the right. Can you come up with a mockup with good cosmesis that shows paging notifications, observations and calendar? I'd be happy to use it. I am not a designer.

Quote:

6) Sort order on new system seems all goofy. (Reaches on a given river are out of sequence.)

Yeah, we sort on river name, not section. We should sort on both, but they are broken in two fields that aren't easy to parse and put together. I'll look into what we can do.

Quote:

7) As I had previously (somewhere . . . an email to Ryan?) commented at length,
While the 'gauge trend' info (so-and-so-many cfs/hr up or down) SEEMS like a great addition, I think (as currently implemented) it is almost completely worthless and (worse) misleading.

I could do it with an arrow. All it really says is that the last time we had a reading on this gauge it was lower or higher. That's all really anyone should get from it. The problem with an arrow is that the magnitude of the change is not obvious.

Chris has gotten good feedback on a similarly implemented system despite it's shortcomings.

Quote:

8) New system (with two line listing for each reach, with 'gauge trend' directly under the 'Level') makes it harder to actually see the gauge reading for a given river.

I will make it smaller and lighter. Hopefully that will help.

Quote:

9) Gauge and Relative Level appear to be clickable links, and appear to be intended to 'pop-up' additional information. However, when I click any of these, I get a little window (with the kayaker 'throwing ends'), but nothing ever appears.

Good Catch. Thanks.

Quote:

10) Going into edit on a reach (in the new system), the division of information among the tabs seems illogical.
"Main" tab has lat/lng, which seems more like "Location" (the next tab).
"Location" tab has class, length, gradient, agency, all of which seem more like "Main" data.
"Location" tab has gauge description info, which should be in "Flows" tab.

That is the way the information fell. I will try to change the template around.

Dear Website Community:



American Whitewater is about to release a new version of our website. It is important that all interested parties share their feedback during this month in order to prevent problems when the website goes live. A lot of work has gone into this new version of our website to make it more stable, user-friendly, and internally flexible. There are hundreds of new features and the important ones are outlined in this document. The new website is located at [www4.americanwhitewater.org]. Any changes made on this site during this test phase are erased every night at two in the morning.



The user registration system, membership database, and join and donate functions on the website have been overhauled to integrate with our backend database. The most obvious of these changes is the new membership badge at the top of the screen that reflects the current user status on every page. For users that are logged in a prominent login box appears. For users that are not members of AW, the box provides messaging that keeps the user verifying their e-mail address and promotes membership with AW. If you'd like to test the new join and donate features, during the beta. You can use the credit card number of 4222222222222 and CCV of 123.




The new account settings page helps users to find and set their preferences for the website. Everything that can be set on account is linked to this page with a visual example of some of the information that the particular section contains. Information from the user’s AW Journal address, to personal notifications can be modified on this page. Nearly all of these pages have also been improved to make use of edit-by-example and the use of dialogs to make editing more intuitive.


For example, the personal gauges section has been updated to show all the personal gauges that are active for a particular user and allow the user to edit the gauge in a dialog box. Preview functionality as well as the many new preferences have been added to the gauge notification functionality. For example, now it is possible to set your local time zone, specify specific hours that you would like the gauge reports delivered, and allow for the notification of a gauge as soon as it comes up.



Another area of significant change has been the gauge system that the website uses. We have increased the number of gauges that we collect information on and the length of time that we keep that information. This allows reaches tohave more correlations where there are multiple correlations for a river.


With the increased number of gauges come new options for sorting through gauge information. Gauges are available on a state-by-state basis and can be searched by name from the gauge page. In addition, the stream team will have access to an experimental map feature that will mature over the years that allows geographic exploration of American Whitewater's geographic assets (this feature is unsupported and bugs filed on it will be low priority, meanwhile volunteers are encouraged to assist in the development of the River Explorer).


Geographic assets can be cataloged using a new interface to the stream team editor. New capabilities allow automatic assignment of HUCs, zip codes, county information, and state information for rivers that are provided with a latitude and longitude. We have the ability to manipulate geographic data on a scale that we previously did not have. The stream team editor also features other improvements such as a tabbed interface that forces the editor to save frequently, a revision system so that a river data is not released until it is previewed by the content author, multiple ways to retrieve data that is posted to the server when the server may not be available to process that data (in cases where the user has been automatically logged out or their Internet connection has gone down).


The river pages have more information about gauges listed on them. Information is now consistently laid out and shows historical information by default as well as the cut offs that the stream editor has assigned to the river. Most of the information on the river pages has not significantly changed; however, new algorithms have been put in place to cleanup legacy text (text that's older than 2004 that wasn't properly brought over to the new site), scrub HTML of JavaScript and extraneous styling tags, and prevent poorly formatted HTML for making its way into the river pages. The number of tabs has been reduced through combination of what were separate tabs. The amount of sidebar information has been reduced so that the width of the river pages is larger except in the case where a river has events associated with it. Operations that can be performed on the individual rivers are listed in a centralized bar underneath the river's name.


New operations available to stream editors on rivers include the ability to set multiple correlations for the river (the river summary shows the most recent update), an improved virtual gauge editor, the ability to set multiple states for a run, the ability to assign states outside of the United States, and stricter validation of the interpretation cut offs (with the hopes of improving the river summary page color coding).


The river listing page has a new format. Rivers are color-coded on a spectrum that measures medium-low through medium-high based on the river editors’ judgment. Mass operations can be performed on rivers by selecting a checkbox next to the river and then choosing an option at the bottom of the page. The option to add a river to personal gauge notifications allows a person to set up a notification when the AW site says that the river is running. There is now an option at the top to do a quick search for the beginning of a river name and change the state that is currently being displayed as well. The gauge page has undergone a similar redesign allowing the user to quickly search for gauges by name, state, and status.


Gauges have the ability to be edited by stream team members. Individual gauges can be turned on or turned off based on the utility of the gauge. By default, gauges that are in drainages that have AW reaches in them are turned on automatically. The gauge detail pages have also been redesigned to provide more useful information in a more consistent format than before.


Outside of the new gauging system, internal changes have been made to the book editor, the accident database, the journal editor, and the permits database. These changes complete the recommendations of a security review made in 2006 to prevent the site from being vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. The interface in the accident editor has been updated to use our forms library.


The forms library has gone through some improvements. Controls can now be linked together to allow a drop down for state to filter a drop-down containing a list of rivers. The intent of this change is to make forms more responsive than they are now. Form instructions have been tucked into tool tips that popup when the user is filling out the form. A good example of a forms library is in the new report functionality built into the website.


The report functionality in the website allows users to document the condition of a river, gauge, or trip and report that information to other interested parties. This functionality supersedes the photo database that American Whitewater already maintains. Essentially, extra fields were added to expand the photo database to allow one account to be recorded and multiple photos to be attached to it. These fields allow submission of manual gauge observations that directly affects the correlations on the river pages.


Virtually no part of the website has been unaffected by the updates. Over the last year bug reports have been addressed with various small fixes. Areas that have remained fairly constant are things like the calendar, forums, wiki, stewardship toolkit, gear guides and services, the store, and the miscellaneous static pages on the website.


There is still some styling tweaks that we are doing and the website is lacking some copy and help text here and there. We would appreciate any feedback that you can provide. Feedback can be logged in the bug tracker for formal response or can be e-mailed directly to rgroth@americanwhitewater.org.









Thanks,

Ryan Groth