Discussion of changes for version 2 of the forum map of The Great Wall of China

[chinoook]

Originally Posted by Kim

Once again I would like to suggest that nothing is transferred to our map before we all agree what to do. I can see that the questionable sections i Tianjin have made it to the map now

After all revision of the map the person making the revision should make a precise list of the changes made. Now it's totally impossible to see what is new and what is old.

I knew that this remark would come. But I decided to put all my new findings into the map. Since we did not yet do any revision yet and it still hast to come it didn't change the situation. I agree that since we will have had the first revision done any changes should be committed. I tried to get it done within the last week but neither you not GWF did have the time and I had to proceed with my work. The questionable sections in Tianjin are all marked as questionable and all together in one file. It will be very easy and quick to put them into any other place or even to delete them. I am looking forwart to our review process and the first to start.

So, nothing has really happened yet - only a vast amount of unquestioned and suprising new places arrived in our map. Just to state some

- 40°12'52.21"N 115°50'8.17"E
- lots of the wall surrounding defense structures in the Badaling area
- dozens of items in the already crowded Datong area
- possible wall remnants in west Ningxia (west of Helan shan)
- defense structures in the GE HR tile around 39°29'47.06"N 112°20'13.33"E
- firtst (but rare) knowledge about the Lanzhou loop
- first findings towards the southern ridges around Jiayuguan (probably absolute unknown)

and lots of smaller issues all around the GW.


-chinoook

[Kim]

This is not GW:

40°11'27.15"N 118°43'10.33"E
40°11'23.40"N 118°43'28.87"E
40°10'59.55"N 118°42'51.47"E
40°11'55.77"N 117°23'45.60"E
40°11'39.70"N 117°25'26.61"E

That's just a few.

[Kim]

I knew that this remark would come. But I decided to put all my new findings into the map. Since we did not yet do any revision yet and it still hast to come it didn't change the situation. I agree that since we will have had the first revision done any changes should be committed. I tried to get it done within the last week but neither you not GWF did have the time and I had to proceed with my work. The questionable sections in Tianjin are all marked as questionable and all together in one file. It will be very easy and quick to put them into any other place or even to delete them. I am looking forwart to our review process and the first to start.

So, nothing has really happened yet - only a vast amount of unquestioned and suprising new places arrived in our map. Just to state some

Nothing happened? Not beside that the map got even more crowded and more difficult to assess.

You knew the remark would come and still you did it. That's very nice!

I don't see why you can't proceed with your work just because me and Bryan don't have time to review it. It should be easy to keep all your work in one or more file and let us look at it when we have time without putting it all in the map.

[chinoook]

Originally Posted by Kim

This is not GW:

* 40°11'27.15"N 118°43'10.33"E
* 40°11'23.40"N 118°43'28.87"E
* 40°10'59.55"N 118°42'51.47"E
* 40°11'55.77"N 117°23'45.60"E

Deleted.

40°11'39.70"N 117°25'26.61"E

I am not sure. It already has a question mark.

That's just a few.

What did you expect? No review process arrived yet and I tend to mark even unclear places in order to detect patterns that show me the real character of the site and the items. That is the way I found a huge amount of things I would not have found looking at every item alone.
It seems you mind wrong findings more than really new knowledge.


-chinoook

[Kim]

What did you expect? No review process arrived yet and I tend to mark even unclear places in order to detect patterns that show me the real character of the site and the items. That is the way I found a huge amount of things I would not have found looking at every item alone.
It seems you mind wrong findings more than really new knowledge.

I don't mind new knowledge - why do you think I joined the forum and found otherwise unknown wall in Liaoning and close to the Russian border? If that's not new knowledge I don't know what it is.

It's a good idea to mark everything in order to get a feeling of the area, but it's not a good idea to put it all in the map.

As already discussed many times new findings should be discussed among us before it is put to the map, but you just choose to ignore that.

[chinoook]

Originally Posted by Kim

As already discussed many times new findings should be discussed among us before it is put to the map, but you just choose to ignore that.

I don't ignore that. As already written before: the map at all is not in a reviewed state. A review on _all_ so far found items has to follow. This is not at all different to the new items on it. And the findings I have showed here in the last weeks have never been reviewed by anyone.

Until we did start the reviewing process of the map at a whole it does not make any sense to review new items that join the map.


-chinoook

[Kim]

I don't ignore that. As already written before: the map at all is not in a reviewed state. A review on _all_ so far found items has to follow. This is not at all different to the new items on it. And the findings I have showed here in the last weeks have never been reviewed by anyone.

Until we did start the reviewing process of the map at a whole it does not make any sense to review new items that join the map.

It's not exactly easier to review all of it at one time and it just complicate things to continue to put new findings in the map without discussing it first.

I would be more than happy to spend all my time working on the Great Wall, but that's just not possible and that means that I might not have time to review any given findings right away.

I think all new findings should be discussed separately and not added to the main map before the main map have been reviewed. Otherwise it just becomes too confusing and a lot of time would be wasted.

[chinoook]

Originally Posted by Kim

I think all new findings should be discussed separately and not added to the main map before the main map have been reviewed. Otherwise it just becomes too confusing and a lot of time would be wasted.

I don't really see why it should be more complicated to review the existing map and to review new findings after one another then to review it put together. But though we could agree in a map freeze and I put my further work in different files for later review (once you are back from Denmark). But this makes the work for me more complicated since I have to maintain two pools: the map and new findings. At the rate I currently find new items (several hundereds a week) it is a lot of organisation I regard unneccesary since everything would be in the map at thre right place.


-chinoook

[Bryan]

I'm disappointed to see that we're not working very well together at this time.

I thought that we had all accepted the concept of reviewing each other's work and either accepting or rejecting it.

Rather than repeating what has already been discussed, I will just paste in a few selected quotes from earlier posts.

June 22

Originally Posted by chinoook

I think here should also be open space for new to come things.

June 22

Originally Posted by greatwallforum

An open space for new things sounds OK with me if I understand you correctly. New things could be added to a specified place, and then they could eventually be moved to their permanent location under towers, fortresses, etc.

July 4

Originally Posted by Kim

Fear not, I shall give your files a critical look next week

July 4

Originally Posted by greatwallforum

Me too. You have found a huge number of features and it takes time to give them the review they deserve.

July 5

Originally Posted by Kim

I think all findings should be presented before being put on the map. As said earlier today I found some area in our map which I'm almost sure are not GW. I think we should do whatever possible to avoid that, because it will just be more and more difficult to find these places when the amount of data gets bigger and bigger. That also mean presenting clear findings.

July 5

Originally Posted by greatwallforum

It concerns me that some of these might make it into our map, and look like they are definite Great Wall features, when in fact they are not. We want to make sure that any items in question are orange (for paths) or have a ? (for towers and fortresses) or are somehow labeled as questionable. I know there are going to eventually be errors in our map, but we want to minimize them. I think we previously discussed all of us reviewing each other's findings and only adding them to the map as definite when we all agree.

I think we should review the items that Kim is not sure about, and make sure that they are either agreed upon or properly labeled. We may not be releasing them to the public yet, but if and when the time comes that we do, we want them to be accurate.

July 6

Originally Posted by chinoook

Sounds good. I aready considered that. In the next release I will prepare that and we can get experience with that.


-chinoook

July 6

Originally Posted by greatwallforum

Nothing is supposed to make it into the map unless we all agree to it. I think that's a fundamental principle to which we have all agreed.

...

Anything that's in the main map about which any of us is dubious needs to be moved to the questions and out of the main map until it can be verified. We must get control of the accuracy of the map now while it's still relatively early in the process.

July 6

Originally Posted by Kim

I agree and the further we get it becomes more and more difficult to keep a sense of perspective and therefore I also think it's important that any additions to the map is discussed here first - on matter how clear the finding is. There is so many paths now so it' can be a bit difficult to find the new one.

July 6

Originally Posted by greatwallforum

I think we have already sort of loosely adopted regions. My region is Beijing municipality or province; Kim's is everything to the east of that and chinoook's is everything to the west. But I don't think that counts for much. We all need to review findings from all areas. Just because I find something that looks like the Great Wall in Beijing doesn't mean I am right.

It's true, we need a review process.

In general, we need to each present our findings and only when no approved members disagree will it become a part of the map. The details of how we would implement this are a good topic for discussion. My idea would be to use a kmz file that has newly found areas. It can be one file or many separate files. Once an area passes other people's inspection, the data can be added to the main map. If it fails, it can either go into the open questions area or be discarded or marked as rejected and saved (so we don't spend further time on it later).

I think items should not be added to the main map until they are accepted. It is already getting complicated and it's easy to lose track of newly added items.

How it would be determined that an item has passed will be a subject for discussion since we can't necessarily expect all approved members to review and accept all findings within any certain time limit.

Let's discuss our ideas on how to formalize the review process and see if we can't come up with something that suits all of us.

July 8

Originally Posted by chinoook

I have put all I had on my working list into our map. It is free for you now.

July 8

Originally Posted by chinoook

What did you expect? No review process arrived yet ...

It's somewhat insulting to me, chinoook, when you use the excuse that no review process has arrived yet to justify putting your findings into the main map after I offered suggestions on a review process on July 6 and you did not respond or object.

Also on July 6, you stated that you would prepare an open questions section on the map. I think at that point we all felt that it was agreed that no more unverified data would go into the main map.

When the first public map was released on July 4, there were more than 2000 items in the detailed map. It's true that many of them need to be reviewed but the vast majority of them had been agreed by all of us. Recently chinoook has been making vast amounts of new findings and both Kim and I agreed to review them when we had time. As for myself, I am busy with many things and my involvement with the Great Wall of China has always been intended as a pleasure pursuit, not a burden. I am happy to review other findings and do whatever other tasks are helpful to this forum, but I am going to do them on my own schedule.

chinoook, I agree with many of your points. It is nice to have everything in one place and see how it fits together. It is more trouble to have to keep everything in two separate places. Nobody can argue your logic in these conclusions. However, sometimes, when one is a team member rather than working individually, it's necesary to make compromises in the interest of the entire group. It's teamwork and teamwork is fundamentally different from working alone on a project.

We absolutely must collect all new findings in a separate place until they can be accepted. As time goes by the map is going to get bigger and there would have to be a way for each of us to know what is newly added and in need of review as opposed to what is already part of the main map. It's true that not all of the existing main map is necessarily accepted by all, but by adding new findings to the main map, we're just making the problem worse. With over two thousand items in the main map, it's not realistic to expect them to be reviewed carefully any time soon and I am just glad to know that most of our early findings were not as questionable as some of the more recent ones. It's natural that we would start with the obvious and work our way to the more unsure elements. I think the accuracy of the detailed map was quite good about a week ago and we shouldn't be diluting that with other items that are already in question.

Let's all please be adults about this and try to work together without any bickering. I don't want to have to be controlling or tell anyone what to do. I hope that we can all discuss and agree on what's logical and all be satisfied and comfortable with the situation. If we can't then we might have to abandon the idea of a group effort and each go back to maintaining our own personal maps.

[chinoook]

Ok.

Never insulting anyone of you was any aim of me. I hope you know how much I enjoy the work we do together.

Fist steps:
- deleted four Items Kim mentioned above
- Question section added to our map (just forgot that)
- moved some of the new findings which are subject to discussion to the question section (debris walls in Hebei, probable modern military structure)
- moving the two inintial items from the question thread to the question section of the wall

Steps to come:
- find a date which we do the map freeze (today)
- find a process of review (it is _very_ important that it is a process). I propose (as earlier discussed): A "maintainer" reviews the section, marks every questionable item with a "?", hands the map to the next of us and so on. Afterwards we decide what to do with items that have a ???, a ?? and a ? rating (we should probably do that _before_ we tag them). This is a clear process which can lead to an acceptable result.
- collect new items and apply process no. 2 to them

This will take a long time but I hope it will be ok for the three of us.


-chinoook