NO DATABASE UPDATING BEING DONE

[Tyke's Aero blog]

The main problem here is that no database-editor is doing any work from the "Flightradar24 (aircraft database)" forum. 99% of the post there are actually done by myself.
After more than 2 weeks on vacation I see that most of the posted aircraft informations are still waiting to get done.
I stopped my work on 25 April and todays date is 13 May, these are 18 days.
Work that has to be done:
Thread "Aircraft to be added into Flightradar24 aircraft database" 25 pages,
and "Data errors in Flightradar24 aircraft database" 8 pages.

As you can see for a single person this will take me many many days to finish this 31 pages of work.

Maxi, you should refuse to do it, citing other more important commitments or some other excuse. It is disgusting that you are expected to maintain the entire airframe database for them free of charge with no help whatsoever and it is also very disappointing that Mike has lied to the entire community stating there are "5-10 editors" when clearly - and as suspected all along - that is NOT the case at all.

Unfortunately if you do not make a stand then nothing will change and you will continue to be treated like a mug. You MUST make a stand and only agree to continue once they have taken on additional editors (real ones, not imaginary ones) such as Nomad77 and 40612 to share the huge workload.

[fungus]

.... and sadly it has the propensity to suck the life out of many of the volunteers.

Regards,
Gregg

I want to take the opportunity to further explain my sentiments on this topic to those who may be somewhat perplexed by my post. I had initially thought to post on a separate thread but consider it is just as relevant and better placed here. I'd simply ask you to firstly do one thing on the forum. Do a search for 'appreciation' and you may be surprised at what you find.

I'm not talking out of school here as all issues have been taken up with Mike a number of times over any number of years. Notice there is nothing anywhere from Admin expressing appreciation for all the effort, time and hard work the volunteers put into placing bread, butter and a glass of water onto their plates?
Nada, nil, zilch anywhere. Not on the chat, not in the moderators room (I've been a moderator there for quite some years but won't touch moderating the forum for love nor money).

I have fruitlessly suggested to Mike that Admin post something in this regard somewhere to no avail. A 'well done guys' or 'thanks for your efforts this year guys' but it doesn't happen. So here we are with lost guys in all areas of FR24 and others wondering what's gone wrong? Why are volunteers falling by the wayside? Or why are they struggling under the strain of it all? More of them might help but that won't fix the real issue.

The only time anyone is told their services are appreciated is in a platitude offered whilst locked in an argument with them. It's not good enough and as I said it tends to suck the life out of those who are decent enough to involve themselves in this great hobby and no matter at what level. Be it simply uploading, or moderating or updating the database, it's all the same. There is no appreciation ever expressed.

I hear you say 'Oh, but we get access to great plans on FR24' as an uploader. If that's your level of thinking you are missing the point just as Admin are. It's not about what we might gain by giving but how we are perceived and supposedly appreciated by the Admin of this sight. It gives me no comfort at all to express this but blind Freddie can see it. FR24 admin are like horses in a race where all the horses are wearing blinkers- all they can see is the finish line (read bottom line here) and none of what's occuring outside those blinkers. Don't just consider your business model, have a good look at how you perceive and treat these good volunteers who give much to this site. Expressing gratitude once in a while surely isn't that difficult is it?

I honestly hope that there can be a change of attitude from the top down as that's what sets the tone for a lot of the ill feeling and the in-fighting that occurs on this site and has sadly seen the loss of many good contributors. This may be seen by some to be something of a major dummy spit but I've been here a long time and seen much and held my silence. No longer.

Regards,
Gregg

[nomad77]

Well spoken Gregg

[airnrail]

Very clearly and reasonably put Gregg. Good to hear from you on here BTW.

[Mike]

@Mike - OK, fair comment and I apologise for the misunderstanding there. However there is still a large portion of my post which remains unanswered! Perhaps it will make it easier for you to answer if I reduce the questions to bite sizes?

1. How is one expected to make submissions via the web form when the plane is not currently live? The web form option is only available in that situation and cannot be accessed by any other method. For example, the Boeing pings at RNT are often very short and have disappeared before you get chance to ID the frame and open the web form. Do you really expect people to go through the hassle of loading up the flawed playback feature and rewind to that point so they can use the form? I can tell you from experience that for very short pings the playback feature doesn't work because the minimum playback speed is too fast at 12x. It's much easier to note the hex code, work out what it is then drop it into the forum thread.

2. The form only accepts aircraft type codes which have been listed in the back-end type code database. How do you expect people to submit new data when the form won't send with the correct data? All it's encouraging is for people to deliberately select an incorrect type code just so that the form will send. Does this seem like a sensible way of doing it to you?

3. The form has only "airline" or "private" for the operator. Please tell me you don't need someone to point out the very obvious problems with this?

4. What happens when you get 2 or more submissions containing differing data for a given hex code? Who is the arbiter in deciding which one to use and which ones to ignore? With submissions being done this way you no longer have the luxury of having many pairs of experienced eyes screening the data for you in the forum submission thread. In my opinion this will lead to a significant degradation in data quality. You only have to take a look at the number of incorrect and incomplete submissions being made in the forum submission thread that are having to be corrected by 40612.

5. Why are web form submissions allegedly processed 11.6x faster than the forum submissions that have been posted in the correct 'copy & paste' format? Please explain.


I would be more open to a web form submission if :

a. point #2 above was fixed and allowed any 4 chars to be entered.

b. the web form was made available permanently on the site somewhere, not just when an aircraft is live.

c. you added a 'comments' field with a reasonable char limit to allow for comments which could prove to be useful intel in some circumstances.


If you are going to insist on wanting all new data to be submitted via a web form then there should also be one to submit corrections too, and also be permanently available to use. It should be done in such a way that the user can enter either the hex or reg and click a look-up button which will display the current data for that frame in the database. Each field should have a 'correct' button to click which would allow the user to input the correct data and submit it for review. It should also have an 'additional comments' box too to allow the user to add supporting evidence for the correction which would aid the editor. Also I would advise putting a daily look-up limit of say 20 per day in place to prevent abuse of people trying to extract the database. I would also make the web form submissions require the user to be logged in and the submissions have their username attached which over time would allow you to build up a picture of which users' data submissions can be trusted to be accurate.

I look forward to your answers to 1-5 above and your comments on my suggestions!

1. We started with live to start somewhere and get some data for evaluation and trim the system. We may add it on other locations later when we are happy with performance.

2. It only accept codes already in database to reduce number of errors. New codes are really, really rare and we think reducing errors by hundreds per week is much more important than adding 5-6 new codes per year.

3. Sorry, I don't get the problem here.

4. We check which looks more likely and/or which has been supplied by more users.

5. It's much easier and faster to press one button "approve" or in some cases even have it auto-approved than opening 2 windows, and copying + pasting 6-8 fields manually.

[apgphoto]

2. It only accept codes already in database to reduce number of errors. New codes are really, really rare and we think reducing errors by hundreds per week is much more important than adding 5-6 new codes per year.

Can you at least remove all the codes that are complete rubbish then?

ICAO are now updating their codes monthly. In March there were 3 new types, in April there were 7 new types. So in two months already 4 ahead of your yearly estimate. So it would be just as easy to add the new codes to the database monthly, rather than ignore them.

[fungus]

1. We started with live to start somewhere and get some data for evaluation and trim the system. We may add it on other locations later when we are happy with performance.

2. It only accept codes already in database to reduce number of errors. New codes are really, really rare and we think reducing errors by hundreds per week is much more important than adding 5-6 new codes per year.

3. Sorry, I don't get the problem here.

4. We check which looks more likely and/or which has been supplied by more users.

5. It's much easier and faster to press one button "approve" or in some cases even have it auto-approved than opening 2 windows, and copying + pasting 6-8 fields manually.

I've got comments to add to at the least points 2, 3 and 4 but as it's almost midnight here in Oz I'll elaborate on them tomorrow.

Regards,

Gregg

[Mike]

Can you at least remove all the codes that are complete rubbish then?

ICAO are now updating their codes monthly. In March there were 3 new types, in April there were 7 new types. So in two months already 4 ahead of your yearly estimate. So it would be just as easy to add the new codes to the database monthly, rather than ignore them.

As I wrote the form is only accepting data that is already available in database. If there is any bad data in database please report it for correction.

We used to have the web form before and it was removed because the quality of submitted data was so bad that it was not even worth screening. Now we have lanunched it again based on lessons learned from last time. So to reduce number of errors users are only able to use codes that are already in database and now the rate of correct data is above 90% and we are working on continuing improving the data quality. We are not ignoring any data, just trying to keep things as easy as possible. When having over 1 million rows of data, from thousands of different data sources, it's impossible to aviod errors.

[apgphoto]

Mike fully agree that having a controlled form of data entry is the way ahead.

Its a shame the database wasn't cleansed before the form was made live, that way the false ICAO codes could have been removed and the incomplete/miss spelt/different format types could have been removed too.

The form uses some strange logic so its difficult to weed out the bad codes in a logical order. E.G. if you type "D" it doesn't bring up all the codes beginning with D...

If you are able to extract the list I would be happy to go through it.

Good job on getting the Airbus NEO codes updated

[Tyke's Aero blog]

3. Sorry, I don't get the problem here.

Military transport aircraft do not fit under 'airlines' or 'private owners'. Nor do some other operators.

[Tyke's Aero blog]

As I wrote the form is only accepting data that is already available in database. If there is any bad data in database please report it for correction.

We used to have the web form before and it was removed because the quality of submitted data was so bad that it was not even worth screening. Now we have lanunched it again based on lessons learned from last time. So to reduce number of errors users are only able to use codes that are already in database and now the rate of correct data is above 90% and we are working on continuing improving the data quality. We are not ignoring any data, just trying to keep things as easy as possible. When having over 1 million rows of data, from thousands of different data sources, it's impossible to aviod errors.

There is nothing preventing you from setting up a private forum accessible only by some key members and have the form submissions automaticaly copied there. I believe this forum software supports email to forum if enabled in the panel. The data "screeners" could cast their experienced eyes over the data and report any inaccuracies so that if the form submission has already been processed it can be swiftly corrected. Without having any proper screening in place you are at high risk of ending up back where you were with a database full of trash.

[fungus]

I can't for the life of me understand why Admin doesn't grab you blokes with both hands and utilise your expertise. You're far smarter than I'll ever be and to let you guys slip through their hands would be sad indeed. FR24 could so much better if it were done.

Regards,
Gregg

For the record, I don't know these guys from a bar of soap but I can recognise talent when I see it.

[Tyke's Aero blog]

The web form is completely broken. It really boils my piss when people like Mike tell everyone to use it yet can't even manage to set it up so it functions correctly.

I have found the Rwandair 737 first flight on playback (06E012, 1726Z taxying at RNT) and added all the fields and entered 2017-05-13 in the last box. Clicked submit, the first flight date box turns red and the form refuses to send and the submit button greys out. What is wrong with it? The first flight was on MAY 13, 2017 - exactly as entered in numerical form.

Mike an explanation please.

[Tyke's Aero blog]

It sends if you leave the first flight box blank, but the submit button greys out if you enter any date. How retarded is that. Well at least it will save me time having to add them.

[apgphoto]

I have found a bug in the first flight box too, but it just seems to be random and as you say if you leave it blank it works fine....

It doesn't like the year 1940 for a Hawker Hurricane I was adding yesterday