Deleting alerts?

[Pete Giordano]

What is everyone's current thinking on whether old, not-relevant alerts should be deleted or left in place for historical record?

I didn't think there was a way to delete them but now it looks like that is possible.

Thanks.

pete
503.504.0366

[Thomas O'Keefe]

My thinking was they should scroll off the top of the page after a year (and be fewer lines of text), but remain as information. Sometimes it is helpful to see the history of a place that consistently collects wood. My idea was to put everything into “trip reports” and have alert as a class of trip report. I think we implemented the feature where the alert no longer appears on top for ~8 years. Kevin would know.

[Rob]

I'm not fond of the idea of having alerts be a special class of Trip Reports. We've already gotten rid of simple 'comments'. We've already made it more awkward and intimidating to enter photos by incorporating them into Trip Reports. So now we're proposing wrapping everything (comments, Alerts, trip reports, and photo adds) into a one-size-fits-all package?

Most of the time, I don't really want to do a trip report, I just want to add a photo or an Alert! Trip Report sounds too much like a blog or a post on Facebook (or other social media) ... a full narrative of a trip down a run, with minutiae few others would (or should) care about ... which rightly should disappear into the oblivion of the 15-minutes-of-(pseudo)-fame which propels modern social media. Alerts should be both more prominent and persistent than that!

I suspect most users (myself included) most often go to AW to check flows of multiple/all rivers in their area, and want the quickest way possible to do so. This (most often now) will be by using the graphical interface (website or app) to zoom in and see a listing of all runs within a certain area, with gauge reading and color coding. When one does so (with the present website or app), you will not see any alerts! Users who are already in any degree familiar with a run are VERY unlikely to pull up the full description of any run! Once they see the flow, they have (or, rather, think they have) all the info they need!

Even if they pull up the full description of the run, the "Trip Reports" are at the very very bottom, where (again, I suspect) very few users are ever scrolling down to. Even if we preserve the present situation (on the website) where ONE (the latest) Alert appears atop the listing, users have to click "See More" or click the "News and Info" tab to see any older alerts, so I'm skeptical about the value of having a history of (old and no longer active) alerts. If a spot is highly prone to snags, that can (and should) be stated in the general description and/or the 'River Features' write-up about that spot.

As I have already stated on another thread, it seems like we are making it less and less likely that any users will ever see any Alerts! This seems to totally abandon safety as an issue we profess to promote. Alerts should be prominent and available NO MATTER HOW A USER ACCESSES our river data! Easy user reporting, and prominent display to other users, was UNIQUE to AW (to my awareness). AW is no better than any other app, website, or blog if we fail to position this information (about new and temporary conditions affecting safety on any runs) where users are conspicuously notified of it's existence.

[Rob]

For me, by far the most prevalent use of Alerts is for temporary conditions which affect access or safety. Temporary access issues might be road construction altering shuttle route, put-in, or take-out location. These issues are likely resolved (finished) within the span of a year (give or take). Temporary safety issues are most commonly regarding wood. Especially when these occur within parks, preserves, and other sensitive areas (often posted against any sort of habitat molestation by any individual not specifically authorized or contracted to do so), they can exist for many many years.

This has been especially true (in the midwest anyway) since the emerald ash borer has devastated ash trees, which then topple into (or spanning across) rivers. One of my favorite short little local runs has more than 20 trees blocking it in less than a quarter mile! Most of my local runs are relatively small and extremely rain dependent, many being runnable a relative handful of days a year, some having windows of opportunity measured in hours (rather than days or weeks).

I have been extremely active at maintaining Alerts on these rivers, updating or deleting Alerts as soon as I'm aware that any situation has changed. (And, yes, I have long been able to edit or delete any Alert which I have created, but not anyone else's.) I see it as a crucial safety issue (to be able to warn any other boaters interested in any of these runs) to have Alerts not only prominently displayed, but also timely updated.

So ... I really don't like the idea of preserving Alerts when the condition they warn of no longer exists. When I see an Alert which is many years old (and has not been updated), I just wonder (or doubt) whether the condition still exists ... and I wonder why nobody has updated it!

If a location is highly prone to snags, I feel that should be noted in the main description or in the 'River Features', because I see being 'highly prone to snags' as pretty much a permanent condition. Just as I wouldn't post an Alert to notify boaters of a class IV rapid on an otherwise class II or III run, I wouldn't post an Alert about a spot being "prone to wood"! I would put that notice in the River Features description!

[Pete Giordano]

I'm more running into the issue of old, outdated alerts and what to do with them. They take up valuable space on the app or webpage. So in Rob's scenario where relevant alerts are easily visible and accessed for each run, what do we do when those alerts are no longer applicable? Here in Oregon we have lots of alerts regarding issues from the 2020 wildfires we had which have been resolved or aren't relevant anymore. Right now my workaround is to make a new alert saying that there aren't any current alerts for the run. But, again, even this takes up valuable real estate on the page or app. Can we have another option in addition to delete that just archives an alert so that it doesn't show up on the main page above a run description? I agree with Rob that alerts that focus on ongoing river issues should really be part of a description just like any other river feature described for the run.

pete

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[Rob]

There is no space more valuable than that taken up by alerts, as long as they are up to date and relevant! What difference does ANY other information about a run make, if there is a temporary condition which makes it impossible to get to the run, or changes where you can (or should) put-in or take-out, or alters or eliminates the safety (or legality!) of even attempting the run? But, absolutely, that means there needs to be a way to ensure alerts are checked periodically (to be updated, demoted, archived, or deleted). There's the rub ... how to do that.

Ideally, the person who posts an alert would be someone who does the run quite regularly, and who would remember that they had posted an alert, and (when they determine that the condition has changed and/or no longer exists) would conscientiously update or delete their own alert. However, there is always the chance that the person who posts an alert does not have ongoing awareness of the conditions for that run (E.G., they've moved, or quit boating, or just never got back to doing the run for whatever reason), or just plain forgets that they had posted an alert and therefore does not update or delete it when conditions have changed!

In order to post an alert, a person must be a registered, logged in user, which means we have their email address (since that is mandated in order to log in). The system could check dates on alerts, and contact the user on the 'anniversary' of an alert they posted (I.E., each year). This is not infallible (eg., if the person doesn't see or doesn't act on the email, if they no longer check their email or use that email any more, if it gets 'filtered' and goes to spam or is deleted, ....), so would require an alternative measure as well.

As I presently understand it (and please correct me if I am in error), some years back we essentially adopted the 'Wiki' model, where any registered, logged-in user can update any part or the entirety of any run description. If that is the case, for congruence it seems that any registered user should similarly be able to edit or delete any existing Alert, Trip Report, photograph, or whatever else. (And I sure hope we have safeguards/backups in place to restore things in the event of inadvertent or malevolent additions, modifications or deletions.) This would mean that if/when an alert is no longer accurate or relevant, anyone should have the ability to modify or delete it, or flag it to be archived, if somehow that is deemed necessary or worthwhile). Of course, this would seem to mandate a distinct 'revision history' for Alerts (much like the one now kept under the 'Contributors' tab for each listing) so that anyone making updates to an alert would in essence become the new owner/originator of the alert. This would allow us to know that/when someone has verified the relevance of the alert on a timely basis.

[Paul Martzen]

I like the idea that the latest alert should be top of page until it is resolved.   I like the idea of old alerts being archived in a separate space.  I like the idea of having a status condition: "Resolved as of Date____".   Explanation.   When was the alert resolved, how and why.   Old alerts could fit on the trip reports page or have their own page.

The alerts that I have mainly dealt with or dealt with lately have been spill announcements and road closures or road reopening.  We had an important access road closed for three years that finally reopened in April.  The closure needed an alert and the reopening deserved its own alert.  Spill alerts are only valid for a few days or weeks, but having an archive of when they occurred in different years is important for future negotiations.

Paul

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[Thomas O'Keefe]

Maybe it needs a name other than “Trip Reports.” I upload photo sets all the time with no narrative text. I think it’s simpler to have one interface. I would bundle everything all together: trip reports, photos, alerts, comments, etc. There have been just too many different ways of entering content and information that I find confusing and hard to maintain and keep up to date.

[Mark McKinstry]

Why am I getting so many alerts to my email account?  Lately, my email has receieved over 100 "New Content" notices about the MF Salmon River from a post from Okeefe.  As a side note, I couldn't figure out how to modify, add, delete alerts on the website after I am logged in.  It's not intuitive where that information is at, even after searching the website.  Thanks

[Kevin Colburn]

Zombie code. We have our zombie hunters working on that now! Apologies. 

Kevin Colburn
National Stewardship Director
American Whitewater

828-712-4825

ke...@americanwhitewater.org

www.americanwhitewater.org

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[Thomas O'Keefe]

I have been uploading photos and assigning to features for a recent trip where I collected photos of most of the rapids and camps along the river. I am saving as I go to avoid any lost work and sounds like it must be sending a "New Content" notice every time I save. I have no idea why you would be receiving so many notices. As Kevin notes, we have folks looking for the code that is causing this behavior. I think it is related to a feature we had where you could sign up for a reach and receive notifications of changes but that feature was disabled years ago but some of the legacy code must be living somewhere.

My apologies. I am down to the last day of the trip so you may see a few more.

Kevin--would it be helpful to send these notifications to someone on the web team or is there any information we can collect that would help diagnose the problem? I know we have tried to solve this before and the solution seems to remain elusive.

Tom