How to make your maps discoverable for nomination & how to search

[Ilanthar]

This is quickness !
Thanks a lot, Redrobes!

[Redrobes]

Wait, so do we have to tag them 2016 to make them eligible now?

It would be nice if they were tagged because there is the possibility of doing it easier next time. But its not absolutely necessary.

Most of them have already been done, thanks to a super-human effort by ChickPea, but there are a few that still need tagging. You can tell at a glance by looking for the little tag symbol thingy on each of the threads in the Finished Map forum. You need to do a search like ChickPea describes above first, though, to make sure that you are only looking at maps completed between the set dates

This scraper should be pulling up finished maps posted with a year date of 2016. So this should be the list of maps to choose from. There could be a couple missing and also I know some of them have odd images since the map was not the first image in the thread. It should be the first image in the thread as per the finished maps posting guidelines.

This is quickness !
Thanks a lot, Redrobes!

Err.. no I have been right tardy about getting this scraper done. I should have done it a few months back. But now I have this one done I think I am in a better position to make a different one should the need arise. I should have implemented pages on it but time is running out so maybe next time you will get 10 pages of icons instead of one huge list.

[ChickPea]

Thanks for sorting this out, Redrobes. It's a huge help for finding maps. The tagging thing was always a workaround, since we didn't have anything better, but it still involved clicking on nearly 700 threads, if you were particularly dedicated, and that's a big ask for most people. I'm glad we've got something usable and it can be fine-tuned for next time.

I'd also like to briefly touch on something else Mouse mentioned. There were a few threads that I didn't tag '2016' quite deliberately (though, of course, it's more than possible I've accidentally overlooked some too). However, many of the threads in Finished Maps without tags are ones where the image isn't hosted at the Guild. I'm a little unwilling to include these maps in our Atlas Awards, because of the link-rot that's so prevalent around the web. Here at the Guild, people still comment pretty frequently on Cartographers' Choice award maps from several years ago, and they can do that because the images are hosted here. There's no guarantee that an image hosted elsewhere will still be accessible in five years time. If you want your maps to be eligible for nomination, they have to be uploaded at the Guild. This may require shrinking the image somewhat to comply with file size limitations. You can always upload a smaller version here and post a link to a larger version elsewhere, if you want to show off the full resolution, but in order to be eligible for an Award, your map has to be uploaded to the Guild's server.

I think this will only affect a tiny percentage of Guild users, and I suspect many of those are new members who haven't quite figured out the upload process (and I'm going to write out detailed instructions one of these days!) However, I felt I should explain my reasoning as to why I didn't tag everything. Oh, and obviously Redrobes' thumbnails script can't pick up images that are hosted elsewhere either, so if you aren't uploading to the Guild, you're all out of luck!

[Josiah VE]

By the way, when do nominations close? It's going to take a bit to search through the maps.

[ChickPea]

Josiah, you've got till Sunday 26th February, so plenty of time yet.