Venues Database - Functionality Comments & Observations

[Jackson]

Greetings Everyone,

Please use this thread to post your comments regarding the functionality of the new Venues Database.

Thanks,

Jackson

[Chezz]

Hey Jackson,

The Venues database looks great. Truthfully, I didn't know you had launched it until your message. This is definitely something I will reference when I return.

Question: In the Food & Beverage section, for example, will a link to member reports (reviews) eventually be added to the listings? I see in the case of El Alamo, Cafe Orleans and a few others there are already direct links to the reports, but it seems there is a lot missing. I know it's a massive amount of work to migrate / link that data, so if this is something that is currently happening, great!

Also, I'm assuming the listings in green are preferred venues, but what about the ones highlighted in pink?

Thanks!

[Morgando69]

Great idea to categorise content properly, however unless you have built the mother of all search engines that does pattern recognition the accuracy of the information returned will depend on user input of course. As I am sure you are aware, the majority of mongers will be most interested in the Chica profiles, so good luck in getting the independents to provide useful information correctly catagorised. One way of improving the relevance of content to users on a user generated content site like this would be to ask users to tick / tag content against a defined taxonomy before the post goes live. Good luck and great to see the effort to improve relevance, if you get it right I'm sure you can start charging users a subscription!


Hey Jackson,

The Venues database looks great. Truthfully, I didn't know you had launched it until your message. This is definitely something I will reference when I return.

Question: In the Food & Beverage section, for example, will a link to member reports (reviews) eventually be added to the listings? I see in the case of El Alamo, Cafe Orleans and a few others there are already direct links to the reports, but it seems there is a lot missing. I know it's a massive amount of work to migrate / link that data, so if this is something that is currently happening, great!

Also, I'm assuming the listings in green are preferred venues, but what about the ones highlighted in pink?

Thanks!

[Toymann]

Don't get mad BUT what are trying to accomplish here? Totally without value for me boys. Sorry. Just don't get it but no surprise very few have accessed it so far. Just my dos centavos. Toymann

[Jackson]

Don't get mad BUT what are trying to accomplish here? Totally without value for me boys. Sorry. Just don't get it but no surprise very few have accessed it so far. Just my dos centavos. ToymannI would have thought that the ability to produce a printable list of the city's top clubs, privados and escort website would be obvious, but for those of you who lack creative vision, let me give you the big picture.

The Venues Database was designed specifically for installation my InternationalSexGuide. Info forum, the intent being to foster the development of a database of venues around the entire world. Ideally, the user could select any major city in the world and have an instant list of that city's most often recommended hotels, restaurants, clubs, privados, escort websites, transportation options, airport info, etc. The Venues DB was created to address an often repeated commentary that the forum's data points are buried in the reports, thus requiring an inordinate amount of reading to extract individually. Thus I anticipate that the Venues DB will be of specific benefit to members who may be traveling to an area for the 1st time, although it should serve as a quick reference for anyone in the given area.

Thanks,

Jackson

[Dickhead]

Jefe, it is a good feature but I am not sure you have publicized it correctly. For the lay person it is a bit intimidating. It took me a while to figure out what it was all about. So probably encourage everyone to check it out, but expect a bit of a learning curve or gestation period. I don't often agree with Toymann but if you just enter without a clue, it is indeed hard to figure out what you are trying to accomplish. We do appreciate the hard work so just nurture it a bit.

[El Queso]

Guys, here's a sample list, three pages long, that I printed by using the quick filters located on each Category's main bar. In some cases I selected specific sub-categories and in addition in some only the "preferred" of the selected category:

28596

A little bit about how to use it:

- Scope.

The current set of data includes only Gran Buenos Aires, which is the city plus the "province", or places outside the city of Buenos Aires. Eventually we will have data for other cities such as Cordoba, Mendoza, etc.

The Select City / Forum selection control at the top of the list allows you to filter the data the specific region. These correspond to forums that are set up on AP as well. Eventually, like the tabs we have with Main Threads, User Blogs, Escort Ads, Escort Reviews and Forum Photos (accessible through the view of a forum's thread listing, not currently from the "Front Page") , we will add Venues, and the user will see a list of venues similar to the current venues listing, but filtered to the specific forum you are currently viewing.

Right now, the best setting is probably to leave it on the default of "Travel Reports. Buenos Aires because that is where the large majority of the data resides.

As Jackson mentioned previously, the design I've laid out above will make more sense on International sex Guide and USA Sex Guide. On ISG, for example, someone going to Medellin would enter the forum, click on the "Forum" menu item at the top of the page, then select the Medellin thread from the Colombia sub-forum under the South America main forum. In that forum you would see the tabs I've mentioned. The user could go to the Venues tab and get the list of venues already filtered for that forum and he can refine the list from there.

- Use.

In short, if you want to print a report, the data in the report will consist of any items that are displayed under any open Category.

Note that Venues can be listed in more than one category. In the unfiltered or quick-filtered display, the report will print out the venues grouped by category, repeated as they fall into each category in the results.

The Categories can be expanded by clicking on the category's name. You can select one sub-category quick filter at a time, for each Category, listed in the category's bar to the right. In addition, you can choose to filter the whole category, or the selected quick filter, by a list of Preferred venues under that category.

Once you have the data you are interested in, click on the "Print Report" link at the top of the list and you will be prompted to save a PDF file locally for your use.

- Advanced Filtering.

In addition to the quick filters, there is an Advanced Search feature. The results of the Advanced Search feature return a simple listing of venues that meet the criteria. It is not grouped by category and the PDF report reflects that as well.

Access the Advanced Search feature by clicking on "Advanced Search" at the top of the list. NOTE: Advanced search at the top of the page, along the toolbar to the right is a forum advanced search feature and will not return Venues results.

Once the advanced search popup displays, enter your criteria and click "Search" to get the results. Note that your criteria is saved between posts, and when you navigate away from the Venues page and return later, if your session is still active, the criteria from your last search will be saved and the list already filtered. To get rid of the filter, click on "Clear Search" at the toolbar on top of the list.

- Help From Forum Members.

We want your input on this guys. Maybe this won't be so handy for guys who know a specific area already but for those planning a trip to a place that they're not familiar with, we intend to give them a tool that gives them basic information on where to start once they get to their destination, from the airport on arrival, back to the airport on departure.

We need you guys to use this and let us know:

1) What you want to see.

2) What we've done that may not make sense or needs to be improved.

3) Reviews of the data that we have in the database.

- Some thing we're thinking about for the future:

* Each Venue will have a thread to review and comment on the venue. Eventually we will have a rating system like we're doing for the Escorts.

* We will invite venue owners to create an ad, which will make their venue active with offers and information.

* Each venue will have a special comments section so that users can contribute data. These special areas will be reviewed by moderators and be displayed either as additional comments, once approved, or perhaps eventually incorporated into the venue's data itself. We will track the users that make contributions and give credit where credit is due.

[El Queso]

The green chaded venues are indeed "Preferred" venues.

The red-shaded venues are "Avoid" places.

[Peter Sideburn]

Hello,

I like the format and abilities. Thanks for the effort to improve this. This is a great resource to those visiting BA whether interested in the girls or not.

Thanks,

Pete

[Jackson]

Jefe, it is a good feature but I am not sure you have publicized it correctly. For the lay person it is a bit intimidating. It took me a while to figure out what it was all about. So probably encourage everyone to check it out, but expect a bit of a learning curve or gestation period. I don't often agree with Toymann but if you just enter without a clue, it is indeed hard to figure out what you are trying to accomplish. We do appreciate the hard work so just nurture it a bit.DH,

I appreciate your comments.

I've suspected that at a minimum we would need to add a couple of lines of instructions at the top of the page, specifically to address that first "Okay, what am I looking at?" moment.

Thanks,

Jackson

[Jackson]

The Categories can be expanded by clicking on the category's name. You can select one sub-category quick filter at a time, for each Category, listed in the category's bar to the right. In addition, you can choose to filter the whole category, or the selected quick filter, by a list of Preferred venues under that category.

Once you have the data you are interested in, click on the "Print Report" link at the top of the list and you will be prompted to save a PDF file locally for your use.At a minimum, this is probably what we need to post at the top of the page.

[WorldTravel69]

In all the Forums Hotlinks on the left of the front page at least 4 links are dead.

Ops.

I guess you going to add all the Privados?

[Admin10]

We have quite a few privados listed in the Venues database as it is. Out intention is to change the links on the left side to create pre-defined queries in the Venues database for any type of venue listed in the left-hand links, including privados. To be honest, we haven't reviewed those links in a while, those that do not pertain to Venues we will review and either fix or remove as appropriate.

[AllIWantIsLove]

1) The operation does not strike me as very intuitive. For example. I am looking at the list and see the entry for Entertainment (73) and click on "Show Preferred (11)" and see, as I expected. 11 businesses. But "Night Club / Disco" then indicates " (11)" instead of the original " (60)". Also, the sub-categories change. After clicking on "Show Preferred" the blue bar no longer contains "Brothel / Private Apt" and "Massage Parlor".

2) You're probably already thinking about this but in case you are not. You need some way to make this less labor intensive. Two things you might consider: a) let regular reports be nominated for addition to some venue category; and / or be) let members contribute entries (hidden until approved by an admin).

3) I really like the "Map" feature.

4) In some categories,"Short Time Hotels" and "Food and Beverage" come to mind, it would sure be nice to be able to pull up a map of all establishments in the category.

5) In some categories it would be nice to have some non-business-specific links. E. G. Dolar Hoy in the "Financial Services" category, and in the Transportation category the various site providing city maps and interactive transportation routes (I am thinking of that site which you give it your location and destination and it gives you a subway route and a bus route and a walking route.)

Bob

[Esten]

OK since you're looking for feedback... Yes the map function is good. But the shortcoming is you can only map one venue at a time. If I'm in town staying at location X, what would be really valuable is to map user-defined venues within a user-defined radius of X.

Let's call it "Interactive Map". Here's how it works:

- You have a big map of the city of Buenos Aires.
- It's zoomable and interactive.
- I can zoom in or out with ease. If I want to zoom in to a half-mile radius of my location X, I can.
- There's a panel with the venue categories (color-coded) and adjacent checkboxes. I check as many boxes as I want depending on the venues I'm looking for.
- Voila, they appear on the map with their respective color code.
- When I mouse-over a venue, a little menu appears with basic venue info (name, address, phone number), and also clickable links to the most recent reviews / posts on the board (in chronological order, say maybe the last three). Maybe there's an option to display the basic venue info on the map for all shown venues without mouse-over. That would be helpful if you wanted to print the map and have a hardcopy.

So if you're staying at the corner of Uruguay and Paraguay (for example), and you want to generate a map showing all the privados, massage places and independents within a half-mile, you could easily generate this map with just a few clicks and adjusting the zoom. And you could quickly navigate to whatever related posts and reviews exist on the board.

[WorldTravel69]

It looks like the progress has been very slow.

Only Three privados Listed.

The Link to them on the left in the main page is still dead.

So here is the Link to the Lists.

http://www.argentinaprivate.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?759-Private-Apartments

Oh, yes, there google maps posted in this Forum. You just have search for them.