Comment 2 for bug 501228

On 28 June 2010 10:30, Paul Harrison <email address hidden> wrote:
> I will remove the "from unkown" and "to unknown". Does "to unknown"
> always mean "currently"? Extra emphasis could be given to such a status
> on the web page.

Nah, in the groups section, "to unknown" sometimes means to current
and sometimes just means an unrecorded date.

Since I'm informed that gratian can't cope with fuzzy dates in this
field, there will be a lot of unknowns as this detail is difficult to
obtain. Having the words unknown on the page isn't so much of a
problem, except where it means current, as it often solicit's info
from people who know.

I suspect this might be a case where Gratian's cleverness has served
less well than plain text would because it underestimated the
bodgyness of the data, and stupidity of humans.

The way I see it there are a few problems tied up in this:
1) Humans get easily confused when there are mulitple branch types on
the main branch page, even when they are provided with dates. I think
there really needs to be a way of making the current group status much
more promient than former group statuses. This could be hiding the
former group statuses on annother page as I suggested, or it could be
making the current group status in a bigger typeface or similar.
2) I'm not sure that Gratian can always reliably work out which IS the
current group status. I'd need to know a bit more about how it works
that out. I think a lot of the records display correctly because I
leave out the former group statuses until I know everything about
them. Tied in with this is that gratian kinda knows when a group is
closed (the became field), but this isn't tranparent in a user
friendly (to a casual user) way either.
3) It's really difficult to determine the exact date when a group
officially changed status. There are very few records kept of group
status (I'm having trouble even now determining which groups are
incipient), those that are are unreliable, and most of the records
aren't based on abosolute dates, which makes it a real pain to try and
track a chronology.

I think I'm afraid this might actually be a whole redesign project in
itself, hence the tag wishlist, rather than any other tag. I find the
more I try to pin this down, the more the gratian side of it eludes
firm description in nice programmable terms, which worries me. But
there probably is still something that can be done on the canonlore
side to make things a bit better. Normally I'd say just do what seems
sensible, but I think in this case, I don't understand enough about
what you'd do, and think i's a minefield, so if you could manage some
kind of quick visualisation, that might help. Cos I'm much more
confused the more I learn about this bit of the interface.

Teffania

On 28 June 2010 10:30, Paul Harrison <email address hidden> wrote:
> I will remove the "from unkown" and "to unknown". Does "to unknown"
> always mean "currently"? Extra emphasis could be given to such a status
> on the web page.
>
> Free text field sounds good.
>
> --
> feature request - group history section
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/501228
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in Gratian, the Canon Lore editing software: New
>
> Bug description:
> low priority
>
> Teffania:
> "I've been thinking of both problems with canonlore and possibilities
> for added information.
>
> I've particularly been thinking of this screen: (Krae Glas used as the
> example, because it is pertinent and geographically close to my heart)
> http://www.sca.org.au/canon/branch.php?id=23
>
> The minor problems:
> *Gratian doesn't seem to handle groups having different statuses well
> without dates for those statuses being listed. (eg Krae Glas was a
> canton then became a shire) - there seems to be a bug and possibly
> design issues there.
> *Even if it's working perfectly and all dates are entered, silly users
> can easily misread things.  "oh it's a canton" - no it says it was a
> canton UNTIL 2004, etc
> *my new policy for when groups get entered into canonlore involves
> official group status.  Which means the formative years of a group may
> be missed (but also I don't have to record every abortive attempt to
> form a group).
>
> The opportunity for expansion:
> *each group has a history, which we are going to ask about to find out
> official dates, why not allow them to put this into canonlore?
>
> My proposal:
> Just as there are currently tabs for residents, and events, etc under
> each group currently, add a tab labelled history.  At the top of the
> new tab display the full list of dates when the group was various
> statuses that is currently on the main tab.
> eg
> "canton of stormhold until 4/1/2004.
> Shire of Lochac from 4/1/2004"
>
> (And just display the current branch status, if gratian can figure it
> out, on the main overall tab.)
> Below this info would be a large space where groups could submit a
> text based history of their group.  This could include information
> like "the group first started as a proposed group under the
> sponsorship of Rowany in June 2000, when John, already an expereinced
> SCA'er moved to the area and placed an advert in the local newspaper.
> After a sucessful first feast, the group grew in size until 2006 when
> they had enough numbers and a registered device and applied to become
> an official group."  etc
>
> Such a free text field would require little effort from furture canon
> heralds to maintain, and responsibility for creating hte text could be
> delegated to groups.
>
> I'm not sure if this would be difficult to program - I think the only
> tricky bit would be the strange behaviuor of the gratian in working
> out group status - which it is already sometime screwing up anyway."
>
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>

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. ___
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 |)__) is definitely not at
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