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Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 12:58 pm
by RossEvans
Matt_Rasmussen wrote:I'm glad there's a way to update the location in this new version. Our building has been shown on the wrong street for years, even though we have tried two or three times to get it corrected by contacting CHQ.

I submitted two minor corrections today for meetinghouse locations (my ward and my father's), and received two auto-reply emails from "REMEDY."

To anyone who has ever worked in an organization that uses this tracking application, where REMEDY rules your life, we know what that means. This is now in somebody's queue at CHQ as an action item.

So I think you can be more confident that these feedback transactions will get attention.

Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 6:04 am
by mattprasmussen
I got a reply email with "REMEDY" in the subject so this is great news that they're taking feedback and acting on it.

Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 12:26 pm
by jdlessley
I can see a problem that can be corrected.

Just to test the meetinghouse locator I only put in the town in which I live and the state. This is generally the only information someone has when they are visiting or moving to an area. The result was essentially an error. Since the town itself does not have a meeting house I got a revised window with this message in red - "In order to complete your search, select a city or town from the list and click on "Search" again." The state was now fixed and the city or town was a list box of cities or towns with meeting houses in the state. Without knowing any more information than this I am sure it will be frustrating.

To further test the locator I tried adding other information. First I tried adding the street address (street address, city or town & state). I got the same results. But when I added the zip code (street address, city or town, state & zip code ||| city or town, state & zip code) I got sixteen wards (eight meeting houses) to choose from. All but three (one meeting house) are in other stakes - and some of them quite a distance away. This is not comforting. While my house address has only been in existence for three years the zip code has been around for at least a few decades. The entire zip code is encompassed in only one ward.

So why can't the locator return my ward as the ward for my address or my zip code? I can envision ambiguity of correct meeting houses and/or wards where a zip code is split amoung wards but not for this situation. How about not knowing where an address is located even when web sites such as Google, GoogleEarth, Yahoo and others have no trouble finding it?

Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 12:42 pm
by RossEvans
@jdlessley,

Were you searching for "Blacklick OH?" That seemed to work for me. The web site returned three potential meetinghouses, and said the assigned congregation is the Gahanna Ward at the Reynoldsburg meetinghouse. Is that wrong?

Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 12:55 pm
by jdlessley
Yes I was. But my results are not like yours. I just tried it again before replying to your post and got the same results as before.

I am using IE7 if that means anything.

Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 1:13 pm
by jdlessley
OK. I rebooted my computer and started over again. The results are different. I now get the closest meeting house as the correct one and the assigned congregation is correct.

Just as a note: Before the reboot I had four instances of IE7 open. On one instance I was running several tabs with one of them being the old or current meeting house locator running as a comparrative while on another tab I was running the new meetinghouse locator we are discussing here. It shouldn't make a difference what is on another tab or instance of IE7 but I was getting the old meeting house results on the new meeting house locator tab.

Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 9:30 pm
by borenmt
jdlessley wrote:Since the town itself does not have a meeting house I got a revised window with this message in red - "In order to complete your search, select a city or town from the list and click on "Search" again."
This message is not from the new locator at maps.lds.org... I suspect you were in the list-driven old locator, since it would more likely return a message like this. If you can reproduce it on the new site please let us know -- something very weird would be going on, since we don't have lists of cities or towns to pick from... Unless it was on a "Did you mean" screen maybe? But I don't think the wording is as you ahve it and there is no red text... so I'm still thinking it sounds like the old site. Let me know if I'm wrong.

Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 9:36 pm
by borenmt
@scion -- I'm sorry you missed your meetings. As others have suggested, it is a balance of member vs non-member and other screen real estate constraints., and of priority between meetings. The worship service is sacrament meeting and is the most important meeting of the day, so that has been highlighted. In many wards it is also the first meeting, but that's no consolation in your case. I will keep thinking about this issue as we design future versions...

Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 9:44 pm
by borenmt
Kent Larsen wrote:This is a great improvement, IMO.

I was recently in Durban, South Africa, and discovered that about half the units in and around Durban have bad addresses on the meetinghouse locator. A couple had the name of the South African province, KwaZulu-Natal, listed as the city.

While South Africa, like most countries around the world, has a postal code system, similar to the zipcode used in the US, for some reason the meetinghouse locator doesn't use that code. All these postal code systems have a hierarchy, like the zip code, and close codes often indicate proximity.

Why doesn't the meetinhouse locator using the postal codes outside of the US?
We do have postal code coverage internationally, but unfortunately we don't have local address formats and could possibly be missing some secondary address fields if they are country specific. Feel free to submit problems with details through the Feedback link on the site. That's the best way to get them resolved. As others have noted, the feedback is reviewed and acted on. Also note that some of the onus is on local clerks and leaders to make sure the information is in MLS correctly; GIGO applies :-) Thanks for the feedback.

Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2008 6:21 am
by Kent Larsen-p40
borenmt wrote:We do have postal code coverage internationally, but unfortunately we don't have local address formats and could possibly be missing some secondary address fields if they are country specific. Feel free to submit problems with details through the Feedback link on the site. That's the best way to get them resolved. As others have noted, the feedback is reviewed and acted on. Also note that some of the onus is on local clerks and leaders to make sure the information is in MLS correctly; GIGO applies :-) Thanks for the feedback.
I think you misunderstand my point.

When I go to the old meetinghouse locator (at http://www.lds.org/basicbeliefs/meetinghouse/ ), I don't get any way to search by postal code outside the US. I choose the country, and it makes me choose a city and then gives me results. No search by postal code.

The new meetinghouse locator (http://maps.lds.org) is in a way worse.

If I enter the country "South Africa" and a postal code that I know is in the database for South Africa ("4001" in this case) I get results for Chihuahua, Mexico!!! If I enter "South Africa" and "1000", I get results for Chile!!

Is this system not meant to let you search by zip code outside of the US?