New Meetinghouse Locator on LDS.org - Beta Release

[scion-p40]

1) Using the Microsoft map, a city and standard 2 letter state abbreviation yields---a very long search that doesn't seem to find anything. (I gave up!) I searched on cities that should have meetinghouses, such as Indianapolis, IN. Google finds the city and state.
2) The Google map showed the US with a pin on the appropriate part of the country. Clicking on the + to zoom to a local view on the Google map focused on Nigeria instead of the US city found in the search. There is no center on the pin feature that I use all the time on normal Google maps.
3) Why isn't there an option for street view? That would be particularly helpful in rural and/or wooded areas.
4) While this version of Google places the chapel on a different, but nearby, street, the same address on googlemaps.com precisely and accurately places the chapel.

[cottrells]

So far during the beta period, many, many people have submitted corrections which should soon be incorporated into the database, once they are verified.

@borenmt: How long do you anticipate it will take to review and verifiy the submitted corrections? I sumbitted corrections (June 23) for all the buildings in the stake where I live and so far none have been changed.

[borenmt]

1) Using the Microsoft map, a city and standard 2 letter state abbreviation yields---a very long search that doesn't seem to find anything. (I gave up!) I searched on cities that should have meetinghouses, such as Indianapolis, IN. Google finds the city and state.
2) The Google map showed the US with a pin on the appropriate part of the country. Clicking on the + to zoom to a local view on the Google map focused on Nigeria instead of the US city found in the search. There is no center on the pin feature that I use all the time on normal Google maps.
3) Why isn't there an option for street view? That would be particularly helpful in rural and/or wooded areas.
4) While this version of Google places the chapel on a different, but nearby, street, the same address on googlemaps.com precisely and accurately places the chapel.

@Scion and others -- the chapel locations are marked not according to address, but according to whatever lat/long has been recorded for that location. It's true that many of those lat/longs might have been derived by a geocoder at some point, but we can place the pin for a meetinghouse anyplace we want. So when you find one that is suboptimal, please submit feedback and they will check it out. I can't speak to the feedback process on the old meetinghouse locator because I wasn't involved. But I do know they really are checking the feedback for the new locator and are making changes based on it. Timing of changes appearing in production will depend on a number of factors, including the volume of feedback, which right now is pretty high because of the novelty.

[borenmt]

@Scion -- just tried city=Indianapolis and state=IN on both Google and MS maps and could not reproduce the problems you described. Is it fixed for you too?

[scion-p40]

@Scion -- just tried city=Indianapolis and state=IN on both Google and MS maps and could not reproduce the problems you described. Is it fixed for you too?

No. After more than 5 minutes of searching it MS maps is still going. 10 minutes later, and no Indianapolis.

[borenmt]

Scion, I just tried again, this time from home outside the Church network. Still can't reproduce. I get results in less than 10 seconds... for indianapolis, IN. It has been a week since your last post though -- maybe something has settled out. Let me know if you continue to see this, and give any addtl info you can -- browser, type of connection, OS, etc. -- so we can try to reproduce and fix it. Thanks for your feedback.

[scion-p40]

No, it is still a problem. With Microsoft it just searches & searches--I can leave it running & walk away for several hours without results.

My computer is just a year old. It is well used in a household full of teenagers, but has plenty of memory for digital images. Only LDS church websites give it problems. I typically use Netscape 7.2, but sometimes Firefox 2.0.0.9. It works fine on Firefox, but not Netscape. The Google option works on both programs in a reasonable length of time.

[lajackson]

Only LDS church websites give it problems. I typically use Netscape 7.2, but sometimes Firefox 2.0.0.9. It works fine on Firefox, but not Netscape.

When the beta of the current lds.org site came out, I was using NS 7.2 and had trouble accessing the site. I went (with another browser) to the support pages and learned that the Church did not intend to support NS any longer. I have not seen anything to the contrary since.

A few sites still work for many functions. The LUWS, for example, will do most Admin updates, but not all. I use NS at work and usually wait to access Church sites until I get home and use Firefox (At home I am up to version 2.0.0.16).

I had enjoyed NS so much that it was very painful for me to switch to Firefox. I do understand the Church's position with such a small percentage of folks using NS anymore, but I had thought up until that time that there were actually standards and protocols that browsers were supposed to be following, and that those browsers that followed the standard should work for any site.

I learned about that time that standards in the browsing world did not seem to matter.

[scion-p40]

Firefox is similar enough to Netscape, but for some reason mine won't remember passwords. It keeps on referring me to ask admin something-or-other. I don't recall seeing anything about the church websites not bothering to be compatible with Netscape. It would be nice if they came out and TOLD us. It is odd that it's only the CHURCH websites that don't work for me. Banking, libraries, research, news, music, videos, shopping, and tons of non-profit websites all work just fine.

[lajackson]

The fancier the website, the greater the risk of something not working. [grin]