On 2018-12-31 10:20 a.m., Aljaž Srebrnič wrote:
>
> On 31 Dec 2018, at 15:35, "aimee@ecohackerfarm.org
> " > > wrote:
>
>> d. working with me on the harder cases ie where this is no contact
>> info and only deadlinks to update profiles to identify whether the
>> space is truly still active somehow before amending them to inactive
>>
> I can assist, we should probably have a Category for these special
> cases, or a list on the wiki.
>

We already have a category for that. I think these spaces should be
categorized as "inactive" just like the ones which deliberately set
themselves to that status, but perhaps with an additional "reason for
inactive status = all links broken and the last edit was eons ago" sort
of tag, so someone sifting through the dregs can understand what happened.

The task becomes clearer if we first remind ourselves of one fundamental
fact: *Inclusion on the list is voluntary* -- I don't think hs.o has any
obligation to list a space against their will. And if they haven't
provided working links that point to an active space, in a data-quality
sense that's equivalent to linking to an inactive space.

There are a *lot* of "aspirational" entries created years ago with a
single edit, no working contact info, and Googling for their name
results in nothing more recent than that year. Chasing these ghosts and
saying it's hs.o's job to chase them will just wear out volunteers and
lead to a feeling of a sisyphean task. Simply remembering that ghosts
aren't alive, makes the problem space much more practical.

That being said, sleuthing out the people behind those years-old
inactive entries might be an interesting way to connect with locals who
lost the vision in one way or another. I would still encourage people to
track down their local ghosts and learn their stories just for fun.
Maybe write down those stories into their pages, even as those pages sit
in Category:Inactive. But I think that's a separate problem from
encouraging the spaces that actually exist and want to be on the list
and have shown it by creating a useful page which then went stale, to
come brush the cobwebs off their page.

(Side note -- in many cases, the member who last edited a space's entry
will be long gone, so someone new will be creating a user account and
performing the update. Checking the user signup process and captcha and
stuff, *before* blasting out an email that'll make several hundred new
people come bang on the signup page and beat their heads against the
captcha, would be prudent.)

Incidentally, I think this is precisely equivalent to the problem that
many new spaces struggle with, of unknown stuff cluttering up their
physical space. Finite physical space makes that a more obvious problem,
but a map or list cluttered with stale entries is just as hard to work
with. Most established spaces I'm familiar with have arrived at a pretty
strong "abandoned stuff" policy -- the onus is on the owner to label
their stuff. The job of the community should be limited to providing the
tools to make labeling easy, but it's still up to the individual to do
something useful with those tools.

Also, bear in mind that mass edits will upset the "merit of freshness"
that makes the 500 most-recently-updated spaces appear on the map. If
every page gets an update, the map will show a view that's very
different from what it's been showing. This may eventually settle back
down as the updates fade into history, but if there's ongoing automatic
or semi-automatic editing, it'll continue to make the map weird. This
shouldn't be seen as an argument against doing mass edits, but for a
renewed push to improve the map generation. We used to say that
exceeding the map limit of 500 active spaces would be a "a good problem
to have", and it certainly is, but it's high time to find volunteers
with skills to solve it!

-Nate B-
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