During planing of futured activations, i saw DM/BW-349 not listed here -http://www.sotawatch.org/summits.php?region=86 but in SOTA-Mapping, the summit exists. Today, HB9BQU is on this summit i canceld in case of missing in one list. Is there a missmatch in SOTA-Lists?
HNY, Peter
That summit is valid through the 1st. of March 2016.
PLEASE - always check the database not SOTAWatch for Summit status - you can do a search on code or name from here:
http://sotadata.org.uk/summitReport.aspx
73 Ed.
Thanks Ed
Hallo Peter
Ich bin erschrocken als die neue Liste auf Sotawatch erschien, ich glaubte zuerst es sei schon endgültig, bis ich dann auch in der Datenbank nachgeschaut habe. Denn ich hatte mir vorgenommen alle DM/BW irgendwann zu aktivieren. Nun hoffe ich noch einige besuchen zu können, die gelöscht werden. Die von heute waren alle “easy”.
vy 73 und HNY, Hans HB9BQU
Speaking of the new list, I take it that the version published in the association reference manual is to be considered the definitive one, and the list in the database is directly derived from the former?
I would like to suggest that the search facility on SOTAwatch (coordinates, radius) is also implemented on the SOTA database, as this is a very useful tool when planning an activity (I haven’t given up hope yet that I will have more time some day …), and the database is more current.
73, Jan-Martin
No. No. No. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
The database is the reference.
With “database” you mean the list that is available as a looooooong CSV file? I hope I’ve got that right now.
Will the online pages for each region be updated the day a summit becomes valid (e.g. DM/ND-003 on 02 March 2016) or invalid (such as presumably DM/SX-001 after 01 March 2016)?
By the way, a few of the summits which are currently only valid until March seem to fulfil the 150 m prominence criteria, such as DM/SX-008 with 176 m, or DM/SX-014 with 368 m (according to Wikipedia), just to name two, and might be kept beyond that date.
73, Jan-Martin
It’s already done and in place:
Sadly Wikipedia is not a reliably source of information. There are a number of summits which would seem to have 150m prominence according to Wikipedia but in fact are well short of P100.
See my edit above. I meant the region pages. The one for DM/ND was still empty about 2 h ago.
As for Wikipedia and its occasional lack of reliability, that’s not really news. Referenceing there also leaves much to be desired. However, it was the only place for information that I could access right now, access to online mapping having been very slow here. Maybe Wikipedia needs an update, maybe the SOTA list does, at any rate it seems that the data need to be looked at.
73, Jan-Martin
The database region pages only show the summits valid right now. They don’t show summits which are no longer valid or have yet to become valid.
OK truly stupid question… How does a summit change from valid to invalid and vise versa? What am I missing? Thank you for obliging me…
Kent K9EZ
Two situations: one, a mountain thought to have sufficient prominence is found to not. The mountain is no longer valid, usually after a few months.
Second, a newly found summit is found to have prominence, so it is set to become valid usually on the first day of a future month.
The first is valid to invalid, the second vice versa. Better maps, better checking, etc all help, and most changes are on historical data that wasn’t checked as stringently back in the day.
For examples of how summits are validated and the converse in the UK see
Jim
Well if you say so, then I suppose it must be true. However I don’t think the General Rules make this clear. Section 3.12.2 refers to the “Summit Reference Data” in the ARM, and as far as I can see this is the only place mentioned as a source of summit information. The database is mentioned in a few places in the context of logs and scoring, but not as a reference for summit data.
Therefore my reading of the rules is that the ARM must be intended to be definitive and that the database is subservient to it (notwithstanding that de facto it must be the authoritative source for scoring purposes).
What I don’t understand is why the same information is maintained in two places, one of which, as a text document, is singularly unsuitable for representing tabular data. The MT is always commenting on how much work it is to maintain summit lists, even to the extent that the workload is delaying the correction of errors. I dare say that the ARM maintenance is not the major part of the work, but it surely cannot help.
Why not just get rid of the summit lists from the ARMs? Keep the narrative text and the generally useful information about the association and its regions, but delete those long tables of summits (maybe hyperlink to the relevant database query page). This would reduce the work needed to introduce changes by removing the need to re-issue the ARM for simple list changes. It would eliminate any remaining doubt that the database is definitive.
Martyn M1MAJ
2 Likes
Hysterical, sorry historical reasons.
That’s under way. The new (as yet unreleased) website uses deeper integration with the database which gives it immediate access to the information. Data regarding associations that was originally maintained in text files and several other places is now also in the database. The final stage will be the ARM data to be stored in a non-marked up form and when someone wants an ARM, the raw data + summits data is pulled and markup applied on the fly, either to a webpage or to a PDF for saving locally.
I think this is silly. The proper place for a list of summits is, for me, the ARM, along with the other useful information. By all means make it clear that the database list is the definitive list, but it is foolish to segregate summit information away from the other Association information. After all, the summit list is what the Association is all about, isn’t it?
Brian
Please re-read what was written.
Well, Andy, my first thought about this sentence was “What does this garbage mean?” I mean, markup is a term from marketing, and in that context it is understandable. This appears to be the same sort of deliberately obfuscating jargon, and as confusing, as the hi-jacking of the term “deprecating” that I complained about in another discussion. Then the next problem is “the final stage” which to me implies that this is something that will eventually happen at some future time rather than that this will be an immediate part of the revamp.
Jargon has its proper place in a discussion between two people involved in the same field, if you start using it to people whose expertise lies in some other field then you are bound to generate communications failures.
Brian
Oof. One for the moderator there?
“Markup” is not “deliberately obfuscating jargon” - it is an editing tracking feature in MS Word that we have been using for many years in the managing and updating of ARMs.
Well Andy was replying to me and I understood it. My initial reaction was “Great! That’s the way to do it.”
I look forward to seeing the implementation.
Martyn