I'm very pleased to see that the formatting of the comments is fixed.

I have addressed everything that Rob and Matt suggested. I couldn't fix the map snag because it has to do with what USGS feeds me.

Rob, the organization of the tabs in the edit interface could perhaps be better labeled. but basically I am trying to force a lat/lon entry and then calculate the second tab contents based on that in the contig. US.

Also, see where I moved trend and see if it is more visually appealing.

Ryan

Yes, that location of 'Trend' looks much better to me.

Though, again, even better would be its absence altogether. For example, because of a 'data anomaly', right now one of my local rivers shows "441 cfs" with a 'trend' of "-325 cfs/hr"! Another has a flow graph (pop-up) which makes it look as though it is climbing fairly steeply, but shows a 'trend' of "0 cfs/hr", when in fact it is climbing quite slowly and steadily.

I understand how users of Chris' Asheville Boating Beta pages would react favorably to his inclusion of the 'trend' arrow (slanting up, flat, or down), just as I'm sure many of our users will (at least initially) react positively to inclusion of the 'trend' info as currently configured. I agree completely that this SEEMS like a great addition to the website. But what I'm saying is that almost as often as not, it is giving completely erroneous information! (And, depending upon what statistical/data method Chris uses for his 'trend' arrow, his may be just as critically flawed!) Bad or misleading information is worse than no information. Users who want to see how the river is 'trending' can click on the gauge reading and look at the graph which now pops-up. This should give a more meaningful impression than the seemingly 'precise' (but completely inaccurate) 'trend', as currently implemented.

For anyone who has doubts or questions about why I have such issues with this, just pull up the USGS listing for any river (preferably one which we show in 'cfs'). Change the USGS 'output format' from 'graph' to 'table' or 'tab-separated' , and look at the consecutive hourly readings. Maybe (as I have) throw it onto a spreadsheet and create some columns to do some statistical analysis on it. You'll quickly see how erratic the data can be, thus how meaningless it is to take any two raw data points and try to suggest a 'trend' from them. Using a 'rolling average' from five consecutive readings (using two readings before and two reading after each 'time'), then comparing those across one-hour intervals is still erratic and misleading. Extend the 'rolling average' out to seven readings (three readings before and three readings after each 'time') or nine readings (time +/- four readings) and it is still often erratic/misleading. It's really an exercise in futility and frustration to try to characterize the 'trend' based upon comparing almost any two data points. The graph is really the only reliable way to accurately portray the 'trend'.

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

Directions (shuttle) mapping still broken (not showing at all on "Directions" tab).

Question about country/state abbreviations:
With the inclusion of non-USA 'Americas' in our 'American Whitewater' database, (I.E., Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, etc) there is a need to distinguish and differentiate them in the database. In the new format, I am curious whether this implementation is now one field or two, and what the 'field edit' constraints are.
Specifically, it appears we are 'forcing' this to be seven characters (three character 'country', a 'dash', then a three character 'state/province/region'). This will be very confusing for the vast majority of users and rivers currently on our database, particularly since a number of very 'non-standard' abbreviations have been used for the states (VRG for Virginia, NCR for North Carolina, etc).

Since we USA-ians are now so accustomed to the standard two-character state abbreviations, is there a reason that this field cannot continue to use the two-character abbreviations for the United States? (Along with the 'USA-' prefix, of course.)

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

Duh, yeah. Directions are back. And the abbriviations are changed for USA.

None of the reaches have gauge info, thus are not color coded.

By the way . . . even before this, I had noticed it seemed like the test system 'lost' all the virtual gauges. (At least, a number of virtual gauges I had set up did not seem to appear on the corresponding reaches.)

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

Yes. Hopefully that is worked out. I had the gauge system running on one machine and just moved it over to another. I have checked many of the virt1 and virt2 gauges (summersville is a virt2 and most others are virt1). They seem to be within close amounts to eachother. However the way they are calculated was ported to a new language interpreter and a new system, so there may be errors.

For every reach in the database, in the News & Accidents tab and under the heading of News, two links appear for national news items:
http://www4.americanwhitewater.org/content/Article/view/articleid/30271/display/full/
http://www4.americanwhitewater.org/content/Article/view/articleid/30038/display/full/
These seem very much out of place since the info listed under every other tab is only for the particular reach in question.

Also, what is the criteria for the Stream Team Editor listed on the RiverMain tab? The logical criteria would be a one-to-one correspondence between this listing in the new system and the StreamTeam Member that adopted the reach in the old system, assuming the reach had been adopted. This is the case with 16 of the 19 reaches I adopted in the old system; however, for 2 reaches (Crane Pond Cr & Mississippi @ Chain-of-Rocks) the Regional ST Leader is listed as Stream Team Editor and 1 reach (Little St. Francis) has no Stream Team Editor listed on the RiverMain tab.

I really like seeing the basic Gauge Information on the RiverMain tab repeated as a "default header" on the Flow Info tab .... it makes data interpretation on the Flow Info tab so much easier. I also really like the linking of Journal Archive Articles, Safety Database, News Items, etc as shown under the News & Accidents tab. History is important for continuity & vitality of the sport and you can't beat the original accident reports for teaching effective river safety.

An overall outstanding job, Ryan!

John T,

I'll look into both news and accidents and stream team criteria. I am not sure on each, off hand.

Rob,

I backed off one more restriction and now allow multiple correlation ranges per gauge. You can now set up your correlations like this (each period is a new field):

New River

1. New River at Thurmond 0 - 5 ft. Low Runnable. Comment:"This is <-2 ft on the Fayette Station Gauge. Pretty Low, but doable if nothing else is going". Class: II-III.

2. New River at Thurmond 5 - 10 ft. Perfect."This is the classic range. -1-3ft at FS Bridge". Class III - IV-.

3. New River at Thurmond 10 - 15 ft. High Runnable. Comment:"This is pushy and fast big water, but very doable for a class IV paddler. 3ft-8ft at FS Bridge". Class IV.

4. New River at Thurmond 15 - 20 ft. Very High. Important! Comment:"Big river at this level. Often better Options 12+ at FS Bridge. Commercial Rafts not legally allowed down the river". Class V.

5. New River at Hinton 2000 cfs - 4000 cfs. Perfect. Estimate. "This gauge updates more frequently than Thurmond and reflects water 5 hours upstream."

The fields show on river summary. I am working on making them appear elsewhere. If you want to do a simple correlation just add a boatable flow correlation and the system will figure if you are over or under it like it does now.

I am further revising correlations. River updates will be down on the test site until this is done sometime tonight.