How do I add a Restaurant that isn't here?

[FiREiCENyack]

How do I add a Restaurant that isn't here? I havent been able to locate anywhere on the website that allows this.

[Jacquilynne]

First, do a search for it using the name and location using the restaurant search: http://search.chow.com/search?query=&...

Then, if you get no results or few results and none of them is the place you're looking for, an 'add a restaurant or bar' link will appear under your search results.

[jen kalb]

As a recent comer to the "Restaurant" page I have been learning through the help of folks here how to add restaurants, edit, note dupes etc. While I have US domestic reasons for wanting to do this my main motivation is to improve the usefulness of the International boards, particularly ITALY.

I have now set up maybe 20 restaurants in major tourist destinations in Italy, and would like to continue, perhaps to work my way through Slowfood, David Downie and other major guides to make this a really useful help for Italy Board users. However, it appears that the linkage feature is not working yet. In no cases have i see the "Is this a Review of a Specific Restaurant" block, with the manage links feature pop up when I try to test this in the Italy Forum. This suggests that linkages are not activated over there yet. Jacquilynne, am I wasting my time with all this data entry?

[Jacquilynne]

Sorry, Jen, I'm trying to get an answer from Engineering on what it would take to make linking work in Europe, but I don't have one yet.

[jen kalb]

very much appreciated. I wont do any more work on this for now.

I know from looking at NY that this function is very new and spotty in its implementation. I even have problems figuring out how to find and put in restaurants in my own Brooklyn neighborhood or Queens (only a couple of Brooklyn neighborhoods are included in the neighborhood list for unknown reasons )

[Jacquilynne]

If the neighborhood isn't in the predefined list, you can also put it in the neighbourhood tag field. the neighborhood data came from a third party that specializes in geographic data, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's great data, unfortunately.

[jen kalb]

I just went back and looked at the page again. On my Computer (I have an aged corporate browser on my computers) it seems to present several different ways. Sometimes it just comes up with a list of boards and states. One time I got to a NYC neighborhood list, but as I said, just a couple of nabes. A few minutes ago I tried again. This time when I clicked on the tab what came up was a San Francisco Front page with no indication you could get to any other place through the page.

However, I put in Brooklyn NY in the search box, and I see it takes me somewhere with some Brooklyn spots and a long list of neighborhoods. I guess I should explore a little more before coming back with critiques and suggestions. But it seems very unpredictable.

[Jacquilynne]

The unpredictability is at least in part because it assumes that most people are mostly interested in restaurants in the same place over and over again, so if the last time you visited restaurants, you were on an SF Bay page, that's where it'll start you the next time.

Opening up the linking to the rest of the world outside North America doesn't look like a tremendous amount of work, but it might get tied in with some changes to make the edit screen more friendly to places outside the 50 States. It may not happen right away, but we'll try to get it into our roadmap for a future release.

[jen kalb]

Thanks much, Jacquilynne.
I hope that the foreign Restaurant info becomes more of a meaningful resource for chowhounds - some of the data acquisitions domestically are very unselective and make CH an unattractive resource as opposed to say Citysearch or even Googlemaps.
Quality of data is especially important on chowhound, along with a non-clunky interface.
As an example, Im still puzzling about why, when I put Verona, Verona IT or Verona, Italy into the Restaurant search it does not pick up the restaurant I input last week. Another place does come up and when I click on the map/option to find nearby places THEN my place appears.

[jen kalb]

Just a question - I am continuing to populate the Restaurant feature witht Italian restaurant data when I have time. Is this info going to survive an international rollout? Id like to continue and encourange the other participants on the Italy Board to post some reviews there, too, if there will be a long-term payback.

[Jacquilynne]

We definitely tried not to overwrite the data that had been previously input when we added restaurant data feeds, but we know that didn't work out in every case. We're not likely to add an international data provider in the near future, though I have asked that we open up the ability to link to user-added restaurants.

[jen kalb]

ok. Im relieved. I tstrongly recommend against adding vendor feeds unless it is something high quality like Michelin Fodors, Timeout or Gambero Rosso., say Adding the kind of vendor feeds I see in the US markets would just radically dilute down the value of the CHOW brand. I look at NYC and see fast food places and cringe.

[squid kun]

>Adding the kind of vendor feeds I see in the US markets would just radically dilute the value of the CHOW brand. I look at NYC and see fast food places and cringe.

Not to mention the duplicate records, erroneous info on cuisine and neighborhood, records for defunct businesses, etc.

[jen kalb]

curious, is there any way to delete this commercial data if it hasnt been linked to anything or responded to with reviews, etc?

[Jacquilynne]

Duplicates can be merged, but we only delete records if they truly aren't food businesses. You can send links to [e-mail] in that case.

[jen kalb]

Jacquilynne, wondering what is happening in bringing the linkage live for Europe? ive wound up working around the US centric data entry fields in populating Italy - We are going into prime travel season and it would be nice if the linking capability came live soon. Any word?

[Jacquilynne]

No update, no.

[jen kalb]

thanks. appreciate the update. .

[Melanie Wong]

I'll also add to J's suggestions to use just city and state for the address. I suspect that many errors are made by putting in a street address and then not finding an exact match. Similarly, please check to see that you've spelled the name of the place correctly and/or look for alternate spellings. On my home board, close to 100% of the new entries (other than those entered by J or me) are unnecessary, as the establishment is already in the database but didn't come up in search. The software is still very buggy.

Duplicates proliferating
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/699928

[jen kalb]

Im continuing to populate Italy (!) when I have spare time. I think putting in the address and postal code if possible is important because of the mapping feature - at least it has proved so for me. I do not finalize an entry until I can see a correct map appear.. It actually harder to get the software to recognize the italian restaurant names as distinct than the street addresses.

Today I notice that the linking feature works in Mumbai and Hong Kong. Please engineers, we need Europe. can you use some help in reconfiguring the data entry fields?

[rworange]

Sorry to bother you, but I just cannot deal with search on Chowhound anymore. Could you provide the links to some foreign addresses. I'd put some Guatemalan joints in there but my first attempt got me a Mexico map. I'm just too burnt on Places currently to do any major effort there, but if I could get a template how to do this I might put some in.

[jen kalb]

I tried experimentally to imput a Guatemala restaurant last night
Here is the result. http://www.chow.com/restaurants/91624...
I guess there is a guatemala in mexico too which may have caused your problem. You can start at the top of the page I have provided.
change the name of the city in Guatemala, if you want to, and put in the name of the restaurant. Hopefully, at the bottom of the result page (whether or not it "found" anything it will give you a choice to create a new restaurant entry. if that takes, a neew box will appear up above and you check an option again. If THAT works, you will get a new screen for data input with your restaurant on it.

Sometimes the restaurant name will not work at the inital stage because of the crazy search feature. I wll fiddle with it any simplify it if this happens til I get a data input page. You can then change the name back to the correct name.

I think the critical fields are the street address, postal code (if you have one) and tel no. I usually follow inital entry with a google search for restaurant name town name (probably local language). If you are lucky that will give you a google maps item with additional data, reviews etc (click more info if that field shows there. I usually link this on the elsewhere on the web field at the bottom of the data sheet. their data may help with the mapping (of if chowhound doesnt provide a map, their map works

)

google maps does not always come up with the item. If not, I use the search to find a website if any or any other useful data and add another link or so. You dont have to do much, especially if you are going to add a review.

Its not a bad project if you have an hour to spend doing web searches.

good luck!

[rworange]

I want to put this at the top should anyone at Chow be reading or maybe Jacquilynne can pass it along

There should be a 'map not available' option. Google is just too screwy

This would at least allow a repository of foreign restaurant info in the database which would be useful to travelers. So what if there isn't an attached map.

I have the addresses, phone numbers, websites, menus, hours, etc of quite a few restaurants in Antigua, Guatemala
http://www.quepasaenantigua.com/index.php?quepasa=2

They simply cannot be imput because the bottom line is Google just doesn't give a damn about third world countries.

Jen ...

That was so nice of you. All I really wanted was a link to one of the restaurants you had input for Italy to see if there was some sort of address formatting you were doing differently.

I've input a few hundred US restaurants in the database, so I am clear on that proceedure.

It was a help though to know there is a Guatemala Mexico. That led to a little playing around and it seems even for a city as large as Antigua, there are no street maps.
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&num=100&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=images&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=%22Antigua%20Guatemala%22&sa=N&tab=wl

And yet ... on this record where I did enter at least the city of Antigua and a postal code, there is a visible street map
http://www.chow.com/restaurants/916267/bistro-cinq

When I enter the actual address I get a message it cannot be found
4ª Calle Oriente #7

Well, it would allow me to enter the address if I allow Google to turn it into a Mexico location
http://www.chow.com/restaurants/916265/bistrot-cinq

You have to look at those records in edit to see the format. In the first I entered the postal code which prevents me from entering an address. Without the postal code it becomes Mexican like this record
http://www.chow.com/restaurants/91580...

Anyway, thanks for trying.

This is way to complicated for me. The time I spent on this already I'll never get back. If there is ever an easier interface someday I'll give it a try. However, that does't seem to be in the works.

[jen kalb]

the postal code seems to help sometimes. In Rome, for example, the mapping often doesnt work until this is input.
Italian address formats differ - I would leave out stuff like "#", use the simplest local address format (in Italy the street number is after the street or sestiere name) (I see on that Antigua map it refers to Calle 1) not translate addresses/cities into english.

I had some problem with maps in India too - some parts of the towns arent really mapped at the local street level.

[rworange]

You are a better person that I am. This gets me too crazy.

The info about the postal code is helpful as that was the only way I could get that Antigua address to show up as a Guatemalan address. Even then, it changed the postal code.

I think my efforts are better spent bitching at Google about their maps.

As far as Chow, I can only suggest again, a no map option for areas outside the US ... and to make the country field visible on the Restaurant and DB record as I am certian this is being stored on the database.

[jen kalb]

I agree it is collecting the country info - I always make sure it is input in the original query field setting up the entry - and it always displays in the final product page.

on some level, I just want to centralize some of this useful data to allow a partial bypass of the search function on the site. to get information - if it wont map, so be it.

[rworange]

If I put the info in the original query field ... by that I assume you mean that pop up box when the restaurant can't be found and you add it?

I did that for El Arco. Eliminating the # it took but then it wiped out the address field. When I try to correct that I get the message that the location can't be found.

http://www.chow.com/restaurants/91628...

5a Avenida Norte

I even left out the street number ... 28 ... to see if it would work. Nope.

Also it seems once a country is assigned there's no chaning it. For the resturants assigned to Mexico, entering the exact same info in edit mode tht assigned the other restaurants to Guatemala doesn't change the country

Not that I'm going to work on this anymore, but I thought I'd leave some sort of info out there for anyone trying to enter foreign addresses

[rworange]

>>> on some level, I just want to centralize some of this useful data to allow a partial bypass of the search function on the site. to get information

That is it exactly. It is shocking how North American and Euro-centric info for restaurants is on the web.

Zagat doesn't give a fig. Frommer's has some limited info. Lonely Planet seems the best bet, but that is flawed, at best. And Yelp ... ho, ho, ho. Though the 20 somethings in Gautemala are really tech-savy and I would bet they would go crazy for Yelp. I know my nephews would really get off on yelping about a certain internet provider. It is how I learned the Spanish word for thieves. About using tech amount the younger generation
http://antiguadailyphoto.com/2010/02/...

Then again I suppose there is no money to be had investing any time in a third world nation.

[rworange]

Jacquilynne,

I know you wrote somewhere that there are no plans to load foreign restaurants into the Places database as was done with the US and Canada.

However, are there any plans in the works to make the database easier for Chowhounds to add foreign addresses?

It seems Chow has free labor in terms of some chowhounds willing to add this info.

It would seem that it could increase the traffic to this sight considerably as that info is not available anywhere on the web.

For example, for the link to Google maps for Antigua, there are two user created maps. One has over 52,000 views and the other nearly 8000 views as of this posting.
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&num=100&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=images&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=%22Antigua%20Guatemala%22&sa=N&tab=wl

That is because that info exists no where else really.That is just one small city in the world. Imagine the number of hits if a lot of information for world-wide restaurants was here that wasn't anywhere else. Most of us I'm guessing find chow through Google. Once here, I am also guessing a lot of people stick around creating more traffic.

Why not divorce the map from the Place record? That is how Frommer's does it. Here is their record for Zuni in San Francisco which has a map tab
http://www.frommers.com/destinations/sanfrancisco/D41223.html

Here's their record for a Guatemalan restaurant that has no map, but correct info about everything else
http://www.frommers.com/destinations/antiguaguatemala/D62023.html

Even though it seems Frommer's has some of the best info, it is still just a small, limited subset of what is out there.
http://www.frommers.com/destinations/...

Chowhound has always been a North-American centric site. Yes, there are international boards, but they seem even more taken over by tourist queries than the popular North American cities.

And if tourist info is what people are looking for, then the Places database would be great if it could accomodate international records correctly.

Is there anything at all in the works to aid this situation?

[jen kalb]

Jacquilayne - Just to note Ive increased the Restaurant listings in Italy is up to more than 1000 chowhound worthy restaurants now and Im continuing to work on it- the pages are showing up indexed in google searches. - it would really help usability of the site it the linkages could come live here. providing maps and incentive to generate reviews. Admittedly the format is not optimum but it is usable. I feel like we are missing a whole year of interaction and increased board traffic if this gets delayed longer.