City Filters Beta Test

[interchange42]

The UrbanToronto Forum — specifically the Buildings and the Transportation and Infrastructure Forums — has new functionality as of today — tags corresponding to the municipality that each project thread is in now appear before the thread title. (If the thread does not have a database file, no tag appears. The tag will automatically be added, just like a pin on the map is, once a database file has been created for the thread.)

To take advantage of the new tags' power, click on the tag, and only projects from that municipality will show up in the Forum page. To return to a full list of projects, click on the 'x' in the 'Prefix:City' link added at the top of the forum page. To find all projects from another municipality, you can click on the 'Filters' link at the top right of the list, and in the Prefix field you can choose any municipality where we currently have projects. The first 20 municipalities in the list that pops up are those with the most threads. Starting with the 21st municipality onwards, the rest appear alphabetically.

Please let us know your reactions to the new functionality, or ask any questions here!

42

 

[A Torontonian Now]

Loving the functionality, but not the placement of the city tags. Having them to the left of the thread name is distracting and makes it hard for my brain to differentiate the threads. Maybe moving it to the line below the thread name, or else to the right of the thread name would be better?

Regardless, this is a great innovation, and I'm sure will prove very helpful to many users.

 

[Tim MacDonald]

I like it! I filtered by Mississauga and saw a bunch of threads I didn't know existed or that had replies that got buried in the long list of notifications I normally see.

 

[Undead]

I prefer the way it was before. I usually have many UT tabs open and the city tags crowd out the project names. Makes it harder to find a thread with a quick glance.

 

[interchange42]

I prefer the way it was before. I usually have many UT tabs open and the city tags crowd out the project names. Makes it harder to find a thread with a quick glance.

Noted… but the tags are staying for sure, and the (city) parts of the thread titles are going for sure… so we will look at giving the tags a try at the end of the line soon, or maybe see if there's a way to not have the tag show up in the tab title above.

Thanks for the feedback so far everyone! Keep the thoughts coming!

42

 

[Tim MacDonald]

I think if it would be possible to toggle on/off the view tags setting in the user's account profile, then everyone would be happy! Personally, it didn't take me long to get used to it and I can shift my eyes to the right of when scanning threads.

 

[interchange42]

I think if it would be possible to toggle on/off the view tags setting in the user's account profile, then everyone would be happy! Personally, it didn't take me long to get used to it and I can shift my eyes to the right of when scanning threads.

Interesting idea. We'll add on/off capabilities for tags to the list of things we are exploring!

42

 

[A Torontonian Now]

Another idea I had which might be worth considering is breaking down the "Toronto" tag into tags for each of the four zones covered by the community councils. In other words, rather than having everything filter under Toronto, it could filter under "Etobicoke-York", "Scarborough", "North York", and "Toronto-East York".

I have some critiques of my own idea -- that it might be too difficult to implement, or that it might confuse people that don't know the geography. Also, the boundaries of the territory covered by the community councils have changed in the past and could continue to in the future.

I still thought it worth throwing out there for discussion, since right now you get around half of all threads if you filter for "Toronto".

 

[christiesplits]

Looks great. Thanks!

 

[rbt]

Tags are nice for outside of "Toronto" but that Toronto tag covers too many projects to be very useful. Adding the borough might be more useful: "Toronto - EY", or "Toronto - NY". Or two tags if that's an option.

I agree that moving the tag data to the end of the title would be good.

 

[DSC]

Tags are nice for outside of "Toronto" but that Toronto tag covers too many projects to be very useful. Adding the borough might be more useful: "Toronto - EY", or "Toronto - NY". Or two tags if that's an option.

I agree that moving the tag data to the end of the title would be good.

I certainly like the idea of sub-dividing "Toronto" (at least into community council areas) or even, though it would be lots of work setting it up, use the WARD number. That way people could much more easily find local projects.

I suspect that there are enough UTers around to have US add Ward numbers to the "location tags" IF we were allowed to edit them. (OK, some might be incorrecrt and others might never be added but we 'ordinary folk' are allowed to create threads so maybe we could be trusted to do tags too? )

 

[rbt]

I certainly like the idea of sub-dividing "Toronto" (at least into community council areas) or even, though it would be lots of work setting it up, use the WARD number. That way people could much more easily find local projects.

I suspect that there are enough UTers around to have US add Ward numbers to the "location tags" IF we were allowed to edit them. (OK, some might be incorrecrt and others might never be added but we 'ordinary folk' are allowed to create threads so maybe we could be trusted to do tags too? )

I can see wards are tricky because ward boundaries move occasionally.

I was also assuming they can use their database GIS functions [ ST_Contains() ] to create the tags automatically based on the lat/long used to place the pin on the map, rather than it being a manual effort.

 

[DSC]

I can see wards are tricky because ward boundaries move occasionally.

I was also assuming they can use their database GIS functions [ ST_Contains() ] to create the tags automatically based on the lat/long used to place the pin on the map, rather than it being a manual effort.

I agree that the finer one makes the location tag, the more possible changes and errors there may be but, if WE (the civilians) could fix errors or do updates, I think it would work. I hope they will NOT use the map pins as definitive, some are really not in right place (though I doubt they are in the wrong Ward!)

 

[jaborandi]

If this was optional, I would probably disable it.

 

[Towered]

Tags are nice for outside of "Toronto" but that Toronto tag covers too many projects to be very useful. Adding the borough might be more useful: "Toronto - EY", or "Toronto - NY". Or two tags if that's an option.

I agree that moving the tag data to the end of the title would be good.

I love the idea of splitting Toronto threads into separate boroughs because the city is so big and has so many projects on the go. Plus, I have zero interest in what happens in Scarborough