Here are my thoughts:
Where's the best place for the maps?
- I personally think the best place would be one of the forums (this one?).
I dont like google maps cause its none of googles business which gay bars
i frequent and it is not really possible to control the content so quality is not assured.
- One of the gay blogs isnt a good idea neither, because bloggers tend to
suddenly disappear when they have had enough, while forums may simply change owner in such a case.
Would I pay for it?
- No.
What is the minimum information on the map to be useful?
- Name of the location
- Place of the location on a simple map
- Type of location (gogo, massage, ..., hotels?, restaurants?)
- Maybe link to their website?
- no closed locations, no history, no ratings, no opening times, no prices
What about places we don't know?
- The forums are the source of information. If no forum member ever heard about a place,
how could anyone list it in a map?
I played around a little bit with html and javascript, trying to produce a simple map.
The result was a html-page containing some javascript code and some data, mainly gps-coordinates of a few blocks and streets around soi twilight and some locations of interest.
I took the coordinates from bing, because google maps still doesnt even have a road where soi twilight is ...
Once done the work of creating the basic map,
adding new locations is quite simple by adding name + gps coordinates in the file. It looks then like this (but is not a .jpg), of course there is a lot of room for improvement of the code and looks (for example there is the problem if there are more locations at the same place so that you still can read everything).
Once the code is stable and some initial information entered (block + street information which is relativle stable, and initial locations), the remaining work would be keep track of closings and new openings, to enter / remove name and gps coordinates of those locations and to republish the changed html-file.
So what we need for this would be:
- a forum entry where people can post gps coordinates of new locations, closed locations
and corrections - as a collective task this shouldnt be to much work for each of us.
- someone bringing the html up to date monthly / quarterly
- a webspace where the file can be published, maye this forum if it is possible to put some static file?
This could be done for the main areas that can easily put on a map like
soy twilight + surroundings, boystown, jomtien etc.
For locations spread around the whole city this is not a solution, maybe just a simple list for that?