If you look at the past spots there are a fair number of incorrect summits input. One of my recent spots was incorrect G/xx-nnn instead of GW/xx-nnn.
Possible ways of reducing the number of errors are:
Check that the input data refers to a valid summit and put up a warning saying “Summit invalid - do you want to continue” or similar
Change the inputting procedure to include the fixed - as well as the fixed /
ie use 3 boxes for association, region and number. It seems illogical to have the / fixed but not the -
If both of these were implemented I think there would be a reduction of inputting errors.
I have to agree, this could be improved. I like the idea of just issuing a warning rather than blocking since some people seem to put ambiguous references in sometimes when their plans aren’t clear or perhaps where a chaser has been unsure of the summit.
I have put this on the list. However, I’d be interested to hearing more comments from people on spot and alert validation policy.
In reply to GW4BVE:
I agree John. It would be useful to have an automatic “warning” from the system to say if a summit ref. was not valid or didn’t make sense. This should apply to spotting and alerts. However it should just be a warning and allow an overide for deliberately ambiguous or tentative Alerts.
Q