663169 Wed Oct 28 18:46:52 -0700 2009 31 30 Site Talk 0 5139028 This thread: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/659829 about a new TJ's in Raleigh has a map under "Places Mentioned" for Waycross, Ga.! This appears to have happened since the term "traffic light" was used in giving directions and I image there is a restaurant by that name in Ga.... This seems like a system that will become very cumbersome if just a mention of a name generates a map. How to report, resolve and/or avoid this situation...? The directions were being given to a visitor, so much more chance of sending someone on a wild goose chase if they aren't reading carefully. Thanks! Wed Oct 28 18:46:52 -0700 2009 111267 meatn3 1 5139096 The last three posts I checked on the Quebec board all had Places Mentioned links to restaurants that weren't the restaurants being discussed and maps showing locations up to 50 miles away from the actual location. Plus the spelling of one restaurant in a post of mine had been changed when the hyperlink was automatically added (when I tried to edit the post, it reverted to the right spelling in the Edit window but then rereverted to the wrong spelling when I saved the edit). As far as I can tell, there's no way to fix the mistake. Assuming *we* should have to. It's not enough that we're content providers; we have to become webpage editors, too? Wed Oct 28 19:13:04 -0700 2009 5139028 10520 carswell 2 5139127 Good to know, I couldn't try editing since the directions were posted by someone else. Wed Oct 28 19:25:01 -0700 2009 5139096 111267 meatn3 3 5139142 I reported the error using the Report link. No idea whether the moderators can effect the change. So far, they haven't. Wed Oct 28 19:30:20 -0700 2009 5139127 10520 carswell 1 5139207 Another one, the restaurant is in Charlotte, NC. The review uses a term to describe the degree to which pasta is cooked and also mentions a vegetable - both terms generated restaurants in Arkansas and another NC city. http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/663175 Please fix this! Otherwise there will be so much erroneous information that the category will become next to worthless. Wed Oct 28 19:59:45 -0700 2009 5139028 111267 meatn3 2 5139296 We have fixed this one and several others mentioned here, and we're working on a solution to the problem. Wed Oct 28 20:50:57 -0700 2009 5139207 227280 CHOW HQ 1 5139384 The new software has unilaterally decided that all references to the North End on the Boston board mean a place called the North End Cafe. Given that the North End is one of Boston's most Chowish neighborhoods, this has already gotten extremely tedious. Wed Oct 28 22:24:57 -0700 2009 5139028 17548 BarmyFotheringayPhipps 2 5139688 Also, I noticed that a post discussing three different Boston BBQ joints had auto-linking to two of the three, but the third was not auto-linked. If one of the purposes of the auto-linking is to create tracking of the popularity of restaurants, then clearly the one that didn't get auto-linked is getting shafted. http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/662948#5138786 Also, if this tracking depends on the number of times a restaurant is mentioned, does the fact that a particular post names one restaurant four times make that place four times as popular than the other restaurants that one is being compared to, which are only mentioned once? That's no good. Thu Oct 29 06:17:27 -0700 2009 5139384 18512 Allstonian 2 5140082 This is an inherently awkward feature. Limit auto-linking to references that spell out the entire name of a place as it appears in the database (and spell it correctly!) and you miss all the ones that use shorthand (Hamersley's instead of Hamersley's Bistro, for example). Go looser and you end up linking every mention of the North End to this cafe, as you point out (and as I did on a related thread also). Maybe, over time, with lots of hands-on massaging (do link this, don't link that) it could be useful. But do the Chow techs have the time to do all that tweaking? Given how well the site runs in general I kind of doubt it. Seems to me like it's just something that is enabled by the site software they're using so they decided to implement it. But not all things that can be done should be done (I have this same problem with the Web site admins for my company). Thu Oct 29 08:36:05 -0700 2009 5139384 14386 BobB 3 5141032 I assume this is a tweak to adress the problem - apparently you can now edit the post and remove unwanted links. Thu Oct 29 13:36:41 -0700 2009 5140082 11980 MikeG 4 5141278 Yeah, that shouldn't be my job. Thu Oct 29 14:58:39 -0700 2009 5141032 17548 BarmyFotheringayPhipps 5 5141535 Hear, hear! I'm already providing content that Chowhound claims magically becomes theirs as soon as I post it and I'm regularly alerting moderators about spammers, trolls and ilk, all free of charge. If CBS wants to pay me to clean up their database, maybe we can work out an arrangement. Till then... Thu Oct 29 16:44:59 -0700 2009 5141278 10520 carswell 5 5142087 >Yeah, that shouldn't be my job. Agreed. It's not our job. If you spot clueless auto-links and you have a sec, I'd suggest you report the post. Let the paid Chow staff clean up this crap that was introduced by the site itself. Thu Oct 29 22:23:41 -0700 2009 5141278 10496 squid kun 6 5142383 Please don't do this at this point. Reports don't go to the paid staff, they go to the volunteer moderators, who don't have time to fix as many problems as are being created right now. Engineering is working on some fixes to dramatically reduce the number of errors, and, as I understand it, will back fix some of the stuff that's been linked in the past few days. At that point, with the number of errors much lower, the moderators should be in a better position to help. -- Jacquilynne, Community Manager for Chowhound Fri Oct 30 05:56:12 -0700 2009 5142087 10021 Jacquilynne 7 5142622 Moderators don't have the time? Fair enough, but we don't have the time either, and it shouldn't be our job do do QC for engineering. Perhaps a report-to-engineering choice should be added. The auto-tagging is terrible, and it needs to be disabled NOW. It is causing far more harm than good, both in terms of functionality for current users and in terms of the stated purpose of the auto-tagging (to improve tracking of which restuarants get mentioned most often.) Fri Oct 30 07:39:11 -0700 2009 5142383 18512 Allstonian 8 5142920 >Perhaps a report-to-engineering choice should be added. Good idea. Failing that, the mods can take a second and forward the complaints to the appropriate person. Fri Oct 30 09:14:34 -0700 2009 5142622 10496 squid kun 7 5143564 I guess I'd be patient if the promise was "we're backing out the functionality because, obviously, it does not work." Tell us that these test cases are being built as we speak, and that they will all be executed & passed before the next iteration is released to production: - Verify that common food items are not associated with restaurant names. - Verify that common phrases (current examples are "grand," "my favorite," "I don't know" and "little oven") are not associated with restaurant names. - Verify that the mention of a nearby geographic area does not generate a link to that area, nor a link to a restaurant with the geography in its name. - Verify that the mention of a common restaurant name allows the user to de-select suggested links before posting the thread/reply. I'll go on reporting errors because, clearly, the requirements & design for this link mess were carried out by people who have no clue how their code would work in the real world. CH is going to need metrics to back up what ought to be its next move, namely to require that the provider/vendor fix this failure for free. Here's a start: of 9 threads visited on the Midwest board, 8 contained linking errors. Use the reports to build reality-driven test cases that will prove that the next thing works in the test environment before it gets moved to production. Fri Oct 30 12:41:40 -0700 2009 5142383 10514 KTFoley 8 5143730 The obvious question being why wasn't any of this stuff done BEFORE release? It's of dubious value in the first place, but having the linking so screwed up is not doing it any favors. Fri Oct 30 13:46:07 -0700 2009 5143564 17548 BarmyFotheringayPhipps 9 5143790 I don't know why I keep being surprised by this fact, but pretty much every time a major new release has been rolled out, it's been clear that it's not been tested on a testbed before it's rolled out live. This one is spectacularly, almost hilariously, messed up, and it's so clear that if it had been tried out on a beta site first, this problem would have been so obvious that it never would have gone live. In the name of all that's chowish, PLEASE, Engineering, PLEASE consider using a beta test site every time you roll out something of this magnitude. Look at what your changes are going to do before you make all of us deal with them. Pretty please? With sugar on top? And a cherry? Fri Oct 30 14:09:55 -0700 2009 5143730 10027 Chris VR 10 5150640 A few years ago, when linking was being installed, the plan was to put the similar feature in as it works with this latest realease. It proved a mess in that beta test. What is frustrating about user beta tests is that glaring awful errors are reported and they are still installed. Also, there is not a full testing database lately with all the features being able to be tested. There are enough posters willing to put in the time, but they are not used effectively or recently even given a full test area. AFAIK, this latest release didn't go through a users beta test. Mon Nov 02 17:11:04 -0800 2009 5143790 10264 rworange 11 5151173 >AFAIK, this latest release didn't go through a users beta test. A bunch of beta testers weren't sent the e-mail announcing the beta test until it had been up for a while (I was one of them). The result was that my time on the test site was roughly half what it might have been. Still, you and I and others did manage to point out a lot of bad stuff on the beta. But much of that stuff wound up going live anyway. I'm sure I'm not the only user thinking, What was the point, and what was the big rush? Now other users are running into some of the same crap. Robert L. said the other day that this is the beta. Can't say he's wrong. Mon Nov 02 22:22:48 -0800 2009 5150640 10496 squid kun 8 5147349 Oh Oh and before I forget -- the test environment/beta site needs to mimic a region that is NOT limited to a single city, in order to verifiy that "nearby" results really are nearby. On the Midwest board, the current design generates links to search results that are four states away because the parameters appear to be "in the same region, despite having crossed two time zones." Sun Nov 01 14:02:59 -0800 2009 5143564 10514 KTFoley 1 5140412 More of the same here: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/663117 And the mods pointed someone who was asking about this to that thread so I know they're watching it for comments. Thu Oct 29 10:12:57 -0700 2009 5139028 14386 BobB 1 5141014 [moot] Thu Oct 29 13:31:21 -0700 2009 5139028 11980 MikeG 2 5141055 The word "pho", generically mentioned in my post, and in specific restaurant titles (e.g. "Pho 900"), auto-linked to a broad listing of pho restaurants, and to some but not all of the specific places mentioned. It also linked to a certain "Pho Restaurant" that was not mentioned. It also caused the restaurant names in the post to be converted to lowercase (e.g. "pho 900"). Thu Oct 29 13:42:30 -0700 2009 5141014 19098 equinoise 3 5141074 I originally posted to mention that the program plucked a number out of an unrelated address and give it a separate link that had nothing to do with my post. But when I went back to check it, I noticed an option to remove the link by editing the original post. A little cumbersome but workable. Thu Oct 29 13:49:30 -0700 2009 5141055 11980 MikeG 1 5141643 This thread has a comment that mentions a small kitchen appliance. The applicaton assumed it meant an italian restaurant of the same name in a nearby city: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/663291 The Washington Post has been using a similar kind of linking technology where the function makes guesses about what's a significant noun and which listings correspond to it. This assumptions are often hilariously wrong, not to mention irrelevant -- which is kind of obvious if you follow the links there. It's not so obvious if you don't know the area and naively trust the links between a post and the CH database. This really weakens the value of the content. Now posters have to submit a reply and wait a bit to proofread their entry for errors THE APPLICATION HAS INTRODUCED and then edit them back out. That's nonsense. Please revert to a search function that doesn't try so hard to "help" us. Thu Oct 29 17:36:57 -0700 2009 5139028 10514 KTFoley 1 5142065 This thread http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/633494 has a link to lower-case "long beach" which apparently is a restaurant in Long Beach. It is driving me crazy because I started my reply with "Long Beach" (as in it's not near Newport Beach) and it was automatically changed to "long beach", which makes it look like I can't write English properly. This technology is irksome and it's going to dilute the value of the Chow brand as people go to places they THINK were recommended on the CH boards and discover that some of them are truly, truly awful. Please remove it until it works. Thu Oct 29 21:51:44 -0700 2009 5139028 10811 Das Ubergeek 1 5142290 same problem, and i'll just link: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/663160#5142288 edit: btw, thanks, mods, for having fixed this aforementioned error pronto! Fri Oct 30 05:00:24 -0700 2009 5139028 105717 alkapal 2 5143559 Today's example from the LA board here http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/663566 in which the OP mentions looking for someplace to take the parents for lunch on Main Street (or maybe Abbot Kinney) in Santa Monica and the computer links to a restaurant in Corona CA (60 miles inland from Santa Monica) that happens to be called "Main Street Cafe" - man this is going to get way annoying in a really short amount of time. ADD: Just checked google maps and it's "only" 53.3 miles away from the requested location - not too bad! ;-D> Fri Oct 30 12:39:49 -0700 2009 5142290 108169 Servorg 3 5143797 Yes, but that 53.3 miles takes four hours this afternoon. :-P Fri Oct 30 14:13:41 -0700 2009 5143559 10811 Das Ubergeek 2 5144692 oops, i take it back. "spring roll" is still listed as a restaurant (somehow it got reinstated???) but only three hours away from the locale in question (fort myers) -- in kissimmee! (btw, for anyone traveling to that disneyworld zone, kissimmee is pronounced "ki-SIM-ee". NOT "KISS-imee."). Sat Oct 31 04:53:11 -0700 2009 5142290 105717 alkapal