By Hombre on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 10:38 pm: Edit
ClubHombre's Trip Report Utility
ClubHombre's Trip Report Utility is a complex, custom designed system integrating our report database with our Multimedia Utility and Discus Message Board Software. While not as work intensive as our Multimedia Processing (unless including Multimedia Intergration as part of Trip Report Processing), the Trip Report Utility's purpose of organizing both completed and developing reports presents its own set of unique challenges.
The features and processes outlined below represent improvements that have been made over years in terms of features as well as time-reducing adjustments to the administrative utilities in which many of the manual operations have been automated.
I. FEATURES
Browsable by Location, Reporter, or Date Range
Browsable by "Award Winners Only"
Browsable by "Photo Reports Only"
Browsable by "Guides Only"
Direct Link to Trip Reports Discus Section
Direct Link to Add a Report
Sortable by Date, Location, Reporter, or Report Title for all Browse Results
Link to Reporter Homepad(Profile) from Browse Result List
Photo Count Display visable from all Browse Results
Award Winner Display visable from all Browse Results
Report Caption visable from all Browse Results
"Reports Posted" feature available on Homebase
"Most Reports Posted" feature available on Reporter Standouts Page
II. TRIP REPORT SUBMISSION & PROCESSING
Reports are submitted via email or posted directly to the site. Processing refers to the review, cleanup, integration, reprocessing, and archiving of reports.
Reports submitted via email are often sent in a formatted version requiring manual recoding to maintain the appearance and format in which the report is originally sent. Occasionally photos are included in the formatted version, but more often they are submitted separately. When we are lucky, reports have clearly labeled bookmarks for placement of photos with clearly labeled photos. Often we need to scan through reports and estimate approximate photo locations and/or titles. Reports submitted in this manner go through the final stages of formatting and are completed by us before posting.
Reports posted directly to the site are occasionally formatted when the reporter wishes to do so. Photo placement is already determined and photos are clearly labeled when we are lucky. Sometimes we will add or improve formatting in the report for asthetic reasons including ease of reading. Directly posted reports are often written in segments and posted over a period of time, in which case multiple processing jobs are required for single reports.
Report Processing priority is usually by submission date, but when reports are submitted at approximately the same time OR when a backlog exists, priority generally falls in the following order. 1. New Photo Reports 2. Additional Chapters/Additions to Existing Photo Reports 3. New Text-Only Reports 4. Additional Chapters/Additions to Existing Text-Only Reports
III. PROCESSING
A. REVIEW INSTRUCTIONS
Reviewing of Trip Report Submissions is done to maintain a higher standard of "ClubHombre Trip Reports". While another site may define a "Report" as every single post regardless of content, ClubHombre defines a "Trip Report" as a more detailed travel log, set of observations / recommendations / reviews, and/or guide to visiting and hobbying. While at first glance this may appear to be a greater commitment, in practice meeting our Trip Report Guidelines is an easy task requiring only a little to moderate amount of effort.
There is no exact formula to describe whether a post qualifies for inclusion into the Trip Report Utility, but generally we expect the meeting of at least one of the following requirements (Both obviously preferred) * A full-typewritten page of text (not including photos and brief captions) * At least several detailed and supported observations, recommendations, and/or reviews that show sufficient uniqueness of the writer's experiences.
We have a separate but integratable utility responsible for the display of photos. For this reason, submissions that are almost exclusively photos are not integrated into our Trip Report Utility.
One of the main benefits to the implementation of these standards is keeping Trip Reports to a reasonable number. Members doing research on a location can more easily limit their results to the more detailed travel entries to help plan their trips and/or gain a more thorough idea of what to expect.
Submissions posted in the Trip Report section that do not meet the Guidelines usually appear to be posted there by mistake or simply for greater visibility. In these instances, we clean up the posts and either move them then or leave them in place for later archiving into the proper sections.
On the rare occasions where submissions that do not meet the minimum guidelines are requested to be added to the Report Utility, we offer suggestions on how to meet the guidelines and improve the quality of the report.
B. CLEANUP INSTRUCTIONS 1. Use Discus Topic Utility to locate newly created subtopics in Discus (Directly Posted Only) 2. Format Topic Layout a. For subchapters and single segment reports, remove subtopic options and add announcement option b. For multi-chapter segmented reports with posts in main topic, reorganize corresponding post(s) into Announcement or Introduction. c. For main topic in multi-chapter segmented reports, remove message options and add announcement option. 3. Rename subchapters with standard capitalization
C. DATABASE INTEGRATION 1. Rename Report in the following format "[Year]/[Month] [Reporter] - [Report Title]" 2. Complete Report Integration Form a. Required Fields: Location, Year/Month, Reporter, Title, URL b. Optional Fields: Caption, # of Photos, Featured, Duplicate, Guide 3. Resubmit form with Location changed and Duplicate check for Multi-Country Reports, once for each country
D. FORMATTING INSTRUCTIONS 1. Add Bold, Underlining, and Headlining where requested or to improve appearance 2. Correct minor spelling mistakes or typos where noticed 3. Multimedia Processing of photos of prostitutes (Link to a HUGE step described as a separate process)
E. REPROCESSING INSTRUCTIONS (REPORT ADDITIONS) 1. Follow Steps B1-B3 2. Follow Steps D1-D3 3. Update Photo # using Administrative DB Utility 4. Update Caption, Featured, & Award Fields for Award Winners using Administrative DB Utility
F. ARCHIVING INSTRUCTIONS 1. Open Discus Administration 2. Reverse Order of Discus Trip Report Section 3. Open Secondary Browser Window for Destination Lookups 4. Open Tertiary Browser Window for Topic Reordering 5. Move non-report topics into appropriate sections using secondary browser to locate (very time consuming) 6. Alphabetically reorder sections with new topics 7. Move single country reports into proper archives (Non-Tijuana) a. Check archive month's single country reports on per country basis b. Locate country archive using secondary browser and move reports (very time consuming) c. Reverse chronologically reorder country archive d. Repeat 7a-7c until single country reports archived for archive month 8. Move multi-country reports into proper archives a. Move report to Multi-Country Archive b. Create links from each corresponding country archive to original in MC archive (very time consuming) c. Repeat 8a-8b until all MC reports archived d. Reverse chronologically reorder MC archive 9. Move Tijuana reports into proper archive a. Move reports to Tijuana Report Archive b. Reverse chronologically reorder Tijuana Report archive c. Update URL for each Tijuana Report to reflect move to Tijuana section 10. Reverse Order of Discus Trip Report Section to restore original order