How to edit a Track

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How to Edit a Track.
This Topic will be on idea’s on what type of description to add where when editing a track. What tags should I include and where. Facts and Figures. A lot of Detail can be added to the track and a lot helps other bush walkers, So I’ll get Started with what I’d like to see. and as others edit this section please feel free to collaborate all the ideas into a main comment like below:

Overview:
Name: Track Name as publicly known, typically a sign board at the start of the track indicates what it’s called. Definitely not “my track”, “local run” etc.

Description: A Description of the walk, tell the readers why they should do this walk (or perhaps why they shouldn’t). Add 1-3 highlights about the Track, Basically a short summary of the Guide Section of the walk.

Facts and Figures:
Distance: Anything above 1.5km, should be kept in km.
Anything below 1km, be wary of adding it. This isn’t called Aussie Bushwalking for sights you can see from your car. That being said, there are still a number of walks that are wheelchair friendly that may possibly be within your suburb/park, which may be of some interest.
If it’s a circuit, it’s a return trip.
Length: I typically bush walk at 4-6km/hr, which gives me time to take photos, enjoy landscape and on those tough hikes get a breather. If you didn’t take a stopwatch, take
Very Easy/Easy=6km/hr
Medium= 5km/hr
Hard/Very Hard=4km/hr
Difficulty: See Aussiebushwalking link below
https://www.aussiebushwalking.com/grading
Total Climb + Maximum Elevation: Try keep this quite accurate, don’t know, then probably don’t include it. GPS apps will most likely give you information like this.

Tags:
These are pretty self explanatory.
FYI. If you click on the tag twice, it become a DO NOT tag symbol.

Guide
Getting There: This is a main one. In short it’s just a summary of how to get there, but also where to park and if it’s not obvious also how to get to the start of the track. Obviously a street address is a great start. However if it isn’t so obvious, Typically I’d start with the last main road, “drive to end”, “slow down when you reach [landmark]”. Park in this location. “you should see sign boards guiding to start of track”
Remember you can add numbered bullet points as well, making if quite clear each step.
Maps: I typically like to see a map of the track/the surrounding area. Inserting an image, or a link suits this well.
Route/Trails Notes: Difficulty of the walk, Direction recommendation when it’s a circuit or splits off into another route. (if it does split into another route possibly add the link to the aussie bushwalking page for that walk. Do you know how far the land marks are. tell us. 3km’s in you see this or that. first half of track is easy then get’s extreme.
Permits/Costs: N/A is fine if it doesn’t have any. If it does, a link to where to get one would be great. I would also state this in the “Overview, description” as well, as this is quite a significant information for a track.
Other References: Link to government/official website for the hike. Theft in vehicles. Time of year to go for the walk

Map: I believe this should be the start of the track. This way it’s easier to indicate how to get there when looking at the overall “walks” map. however as a lot of tracks start from the same location, the most significant landmark location is also a good idea.

What’s everyone’s opinions on the different topics? What else do people want clarification on when doing the tracks.

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I’d also like to mention Photos and GPS track information:
Photos: Personally, I don’t believe this is the place to be uploading selfies. I like to see:

  • The Landmark/points of interest
  • Wildlife I may get to see
  • Maps of the track
  • Elevation charts for the track
  • Possibly directional ques if it’s really hard to understand how to get there/the direction of the route itself.

GPS Tracks: Call it the name of the track. possibly even have directions GPS tracks too as sometimes google maps doesn’t provide this nicest route.

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Thanks @Maverick. All good info. My main comment would be on the map - putting the pin on the carpark can be problematic if there are many walks leaving from that location. The map isn’t very good at showing clusters of walks (it’s on my list of something to fix one day, but I’ve done a lot of map work recently and I want to work on other stuff now). I have wondered about having the ability to specify where the carpark is for a walk then we could even have common directions for all the walks that leave from the carpark… but I’m worried that ends up being too complicated.

I’m currently working on improving the management of photos so everybody can easily edit the photo captions, delete duplicates and even reorder them so we can have the more useful photos up top. I agree that ideally photos wouldn’t be selfies, but I generally prefer having something rather than nothing so I’m always happy with whatever info or photos people provide. Hopefully with this photo page we’ll be able to push the less useful photos down the bottom and have the best at the top.

As a general rule I still encourage people to add a walk even if they don’t fill out all the details. Sometimes just having the name will help people get people to a walk and over time we can keep improving the details until we have a full description.

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I’ll add to your call for feedback… is there anything you think should be added/removed from the template that is given for the guide when you add a new walk? I probably wrote the current template in 10 minutes a decade ago to give people a bit of an idea of what to add in there.

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I’ve started this forum, in hope people will add to it. Hopefully in a year from now, possibly we might get an idea of what the overall community wants from the template. As for now. I believe it’s quite decent and considering some sections already don’t get filled in, I don’t think anything else needs to be added.

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Good work Maverick. I didn’t understand what you were getting at initially, but re-read it this morning to make it make sense!
It is very difficult to discipline contributors to fill in all the boxes correctly; just give them some useful tips/guidelines. The ethos is to get people/families out there walking this wonderful country and if they don’t have the time or the technology to add the full details of a walk, that is just fine by me. Hopefully someone else will enhance the details.
Have a look at two recent walks loaded: ‘Walk on water’ and ‘Mount John’.
‘Walk on water’ has no details. I know that area and have never heard of it, but will spend some time researching and enhance it for them. ‘Mount John’ is one of mine and having loaded over 100 new walks over the years, I think I have perfected it and they look more like what we want to achieve.
I have my own template on the computer and try and provide as much info as possible on new walks. It can often take me a couple of days to get the walk right and also do the same for existing walks if the details are incomplete (example Mt Cooran which I climbed for the first time just recently). But not everyone has the same time or dedication as myself.

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This is more intended to be a guide for those that want to input data, but aren’t exactly sure what to say. Currently there is a little template which is there for when a walk is created, which is good (not overwhelming). Some good done up walks would be great examples as a guide. Perfect for this forum. I’ll share the links here if I find some other nice full detailed ones.

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Distance - I don’t think that we should be looking to discourage walks under 1km. Analysis shows that of the total 300+ walks I have done, 15% were under 1km, but each one had a story to tell and when the grandchildren were younger, that was all they could manage.

Photos - I have to say, I haven’t seen too many selfie photos, but I wish sometimes that I could delete my own photo(s), when they don’t turn out right. Not sure we should be able to delete other peoples photos, even as ‘moderator’, but changing the order would be good. I now always load the best photo of the walk within the walk details itself.

GPS Track - Also wish we could delete a GPS track, as sometimes, until you see the graph, you don’t realise that it is rubbish. I find GPS tracking is notorious for getting heights wrong half way through a walk - something to do with switching from one satellite to another I reckon.

Map Icon - Where to put the icon has always been a bit of a problem. I always put it at the start of the walk, but many put it at the highest point/lookout/waterfall etc., which can be confusing particularly if there is no ‘GPS Tack’ loaded. Either way, there is an issue.

Overall, I think the ‘walk template’ is pretty good, although I always change ‘Other References’ to Other References/Comments’.

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Distance: Anything above 1.5km, should be kept in km. Below think about putting it in m.

Map icon: If there is no tracks in the area, place it at the start of the track. This way it’s easier to indicate how to get there when looking at the overall “walks” map. However as a lot of tracks start from the same location, the most significant (Highest point/lookout/waterfall) landmark location is also a good idea.

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Some good examples:
https://www.aussiebushwalking.com/qld/springbrook/purling-brook-falls-circuit-and-warringa-pool
https://www.aussiebushwalking.com/qld/wooroonooran-national-park/mt-bartle-frere-western-approach
https://www.aussiebushwalking.com/new-zealand/south-island-nz/mount-john

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An example of someone not following the guidelines.
Someone ran a little crazy with ‘new’ walks yesterday afternoon: Gardens, Mt Tinbeerwah, Maleny, Donna (was this the persons name?), Mt Coolum. Originally no walk details were provided and they were all duplicates of existing walks. This morning two of them have had details added and the walk ‘ticked’, both by someone called ‘Remi (Frog n Roo)’.
Obviously the person does not realise that you have to ‘tick’ an existing walk, not create a new one, as they do on Wikiloc.
I will try and go through and merge them with the original/existing walk.