Problem - there are too many incomplete old and irrelevant projects
HOT has a duty to ensure that volunteers are not spending their time on projects where the data needs have since moved on. There are a large number of published projects (around 900 in Sep 2024 - or over 33% of published projects) that are not completely mapped and validated but are so old that the data needs have likely disappeared. These should be archived so that volunteers can focus on the newer more meaningful projects.
Manually following up with project creators one-by-one to archive all of these old projects is an impossibly large task. In place of this HOT staff conduct rounds of manual 'gardening' to mass archive projects. This is laborious and only occurs very ocassionally (see latest documentation on this). In the meantime volunteers spend their time on irrelevant projects with outdated instructions and imagery.
Solution - automatically message project creator and then eventually automatically archive project
Notify project creator to archive a published incomplete project created more than 24 months ago, do this by automatically posting in the questions and comments section of the project with a message like:
Hi #author this project was created more than two years ago but is still active and is not complete. Please consider archiving the project now, you have a duty to ensure that the volunteer community is working on meaningful projects and it is likely that your data needs have moved on with a project this old or that the instructions or imagery have become outdated. In four months' time this project will be automatically archived.
Then automatically archive once the project hits the 28 months since creation date (if the project creator has not already archived).
Alternative - Manual project gardening
Described in this Wiki it is a laborious and very infrequent manual process.
Resolving this issue would make Phase 2 of the Tasking Manager Gardening process redundant. Related issue #6365 would make Phase 1 of the process redundant.
Problem - there are too many incomplete old and irrelevant projects
HOT has a duty to ensure that volunteers are not spending their time on projects where the data needs have since moved on. There are a large number of published projects (around 900 in Sep 2024 - or over 33% of published projects) that are not completely mapped and validated but are so old that the data needs have likely disappeared. These should be archived so that volunteers can focus on the newer more meaningful projects.
Manually following up with project creators one-by-one to archive all of these old projects is an impossibly large task. In place of this HOT staff conduct rounds of manual 'gardening' to mass archive projects. This is laborious and only occurs very ocassionally (see latest documentation on this). In the meantime volunteers spend their time on irrelevant projects with outdated instructions and imagery.
Solution - automatically message project creator and then eventually automatically archive project
Notify project creator to archive a published incomplete project created more than 24 months ago, do this by automatically posting in the questions and comments section of the project with a message like:
Hi #author this project was created more than two years ago but is still active and is not complete. Please consider archiving the project now, you have a duty to ensure that the volunteer community is working on meaningful projects and it is likely that your data needs have moved on with a project this old or that the instructions or imagery have become outdated. In four months' time this project will be automatically archived.Then automatically archive once the project hits the 28 months since creation date (if the project creator has not already archived).
Alternative - Manual project gardening
Described in this Wiki it is a laborious and very infrequent manual process.
Resolving this issue would make Phase 2 of the Tasking Manager Gardening process redundant. Related issue #6365 would make Phase 1 of the process redundant.