MGoGoogle Recruiting Map 1.0

Submitted by Deep Under Cover on

Mods please move if not diary worthy

Yesterday in Rescue_Dawn's Recruiting Map diary, someone commented that they hoped we wouldn't get to the point of having an interactive Google map for our recruiting... We just did.

I read the comment and thought it was a cool idea, so I got to work.  Being fresh out of school and not really having much of a life outside of work, I had the spare time.  I came up with a rough draft for the map yesterday, and today I have made some major updates to make the map a more powerful tool for tracking recruiting.  Features for the map originally included:

  • Interactive Google map with interest points at each recruit's location

I have revamped it to now be a community-supported tool.  New features include:

  • A list of links to recruits to help easier locate one particular recruit on the map
  • Updated geocoding caches... Hopefully will make markers more accurate
  • The ability for anyone to propose updates to existing recruit
  • The ability for anyone to propose new recruits
  • Email confirmation of approved changes or disapproved changes with reasoning
  • List of recent contributors
  • New additional info field for linking to articles, highlight videos, other info, etc.

Any changes proposed will be moderated by me.  I will not be verifying the data in the proposed changes, per se, this is just really to avoid system abuse.

What I need from people here is to look at the map and test it out.  There are a lot of aesthetic things that need to be changed (I got numerous ideas yesterday, thanks to everyone!), but I chose to focus more on functionality, and even then I am sure there is plenty out there that could still break (there is a lot of data-validation that needs to be done eventually).  If you have any ideas that would make this more user friendly, or if you notice something break, let me know and I will get to fixing it!

I think with everyone's help it could turn into a pretty neat community recruiting tool.

The Map is found here

To get started in adding info to recruits, click the Click to Contribute button in the upper-right (can be hard to see).

I hope everyone finds it useful and I look forward to getting some feedback!

Deep Under Cover

Comments

ish

May 9th, 2011 at 4:14 PM ^

holy fuck that's awesome.  i wish posbanging you actually did something. 

i have no real comment apart from - that's an amazingly useful tool.

GunnersApe

May 9th, 2011 at 7:30 PM ^

Recue_Dawn, we're gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B. We have some new people coming in, and we need all the space we can get. So if you could go ahead and pack up your stuff and move it down there, that would be terrific, mmmKay? 

 

 

Hill.FootballR…

May 10th, 2011 at 12:12 AM ^

Your maps are still very useful for just seeing their names and taking a quick look don't be so hard on yourself.

As for this google maps this is awesome, you should make it so that you when you scroll over each point it displays their name and all the info you have so that you dont have to click on their names or points individually. Just a suggestion I have no idea if that can be done or not. Also if you could make a 4th column for non-Michigan commits so that they have their own category now.

tubauberalles

May 9th, 2011 at 5:48 PM ^

Not sure what the dataset looks like, but a couple of the recruits' tabs on the map pop-ups say they're from "Cincinatti, AK" (AJ Williamson) or "Detroit, AK" (Royce Jenkins-Stone).

 

Very cool map, though and it'll be very interesting to refer to throughout the year.

Tozmo

May 9th, 2011 at 8:13 PM ^

Thanks for setting this up/putting in the time.

Now the question is: how can we use this to advance M football?  I feel the site originally started as a quality base for news, moved into basic analysis, then provided in depth analysis (mathlete), then informative recruiting news (Tim/Tom).  With this, can we establish MGoRecruiting 2.0, where recruits can have a place?  Will this help the passerby look to see where targets are, and then go heckle them to join The Team?

Deep Under Cover

May 10th, 2011 at 8:08 AM ^

Thanks for all the feedback everyone! I like some of the suggestions out there, so I will get to cracking on them!

And taking a look at the "Recent Contributors" list, it appears groper cleveland deserves a treat (or beer).

MGoShoe

May 10th, 2011 at 10:57 AM ^

...set of maps of where former Iowa basketball and football players are playing or coaching.

Any interest in creating similar Google Maps of former Michigan players?

If you want to take this on, here's some data to get you started: