Re-openings
As thingies open back up, we want to provide some tips for updating the map. As you can see in the chart below, map edits slowed down during the pando - because places were closed - but in the past month or so they’ve increased a lot.
When reading about closed businesses, or when biking around and seeing shuttered buildings, it can be unclear if places are temporarily or permanently closed. We’ve tried to encourage map users to not be too hasty with deeming them permanently closed, and we have also advised that you keep the machines listed at locations but leave a location comment saying “closed for now” or whatever. Because if you remove all the machines, then the location gets auto-deleted. If a location gets deleted, then it’s more work for us to catch up when things open up again.
As more places re-open, it’s getting easier to tell if they’re permanently closed. If you are confident that a place is perma-closed, please remove all the machines from the location. That’s all you have to do. But if it’s still unclear if they plan on reopening, then please just leave the location as is for now!
That’s it, really. That’s our advice.
Comments
Here’s a fun edge case:
Operators removed their machines from on location during the pandemic so they could rent them out. So technically all the machines were removed from the location while it was either closed or had reduced hours. Now the rental agreements are coming to an end and machines are being put back into previous locations. Any operator that updated their locations on pinballmap when they removed the machines effectively removed the location on accident. So now the region admins have to approve new locations that never closed?