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comment by veen
veen  ·  3146 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski prototypical API is here

Yes! But I was also thinking of adding the location to posts as something you can follow, e.g. next to #thehumancondition it could say "Area 51", with a link to all the posts geotagged with that location. I could then subscribe to all Area 51 posts. But that's probably really difficult to do because there can be multiple names for the same thing, because you could also tag that post with "Nevada Desert" or "Nevada". Maaybe it could work if you can only subscribe to administrative areas - countries, states and counties/municipalities. The result could probably feed into a map in some way.





insomniasexx  ·  3146 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It would probably be necessary to hook into a map API that has full addresses, etc. That way when I enter Death Valley, I don't just see Death Valley posts, it also (automatically) falls under California and United States.

This would obviously be way more helpful for smaller countries that don't have as many posts. While some people might be specific and say "Kabul", for most items it would probably be "Afghanistan". We wouldn't want the one post that was specifically tagged "Kabul" to not appear when the other 9 posts were simply tagged Afghanistan.

I still envision this as a third party site that hooks into the Hubski publications and links back to Hubski. It doesn't 100% jive with what Hubski does and it adds another layer/layers to the already far-from-perfect tagging system. Plus, integrating a map API(s) into Hubski's current set up could be a bit of a server hit due to our infrastructure. And the reward, on Hubski.com, isn't really worth that.

One way to get posts tagged is to show 5 or so random posts and 5 of the newest posts and have people tag them every time they visit the site. Slowly but surely, the map would begin to fill out. I also have a feeling that a lot of posts wouldn't have a location.

veen  ·  3146 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yes, that makes more sense. An implementation with a smaller server footprint would require a prefetched list of places and areas, though. The hierarchy in the list (LA County inside CA inside the US) could still provide something useful.

And for the posts that don't have a location, there's always Null Island.

insomniasexx  ·  3145 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Null Island is going to be huge. :P