Provide a way for users to suggest a restroom has been removed, an establishment is closed, etc.

[rootwork]

Scope / difficulty

I don't know what the workflow looks like on y'alls end. I'm sorry I'm not that familiar with the development backend to better assess what the difficulty level of all of this would be.

Impact

• I've personally found several listings for places that I know no longer exist. The only mechanisms right now are to a) edit the location and add "CLOSED" or something like that to the title, or b) use the contact form, which I'm sure is clumsier to deal with on your end.
• Folx won't encounter restrooms that don't exist!

Rationale

I looked at couldn't find any way to suggest that a location was closed. I also searched GitHub issues, although it was a bit difficult given the terms ("closed," "remove," "deleting" etc. all show up a lot for all sorts of things).

Proposal

At its most basic it could just be a separate webform that allows a user to suggest that a location has closed (or no longer has a restroom), but it might be harder on your end if it's different than the existing process that edits are suggested.

Maybe just a checkbox on the "propose edits" form that says something like "this location is closed, or no longer has a restroom", perhaps with a related comment field?

And then as to whether when you approve/confirm such a status the listing should be removed entirely or just marked in some way (in case people were relying on it before?) is probably another thing to determine.

How to actually do this:

Uh yeah, no idea. I'll try to learn some of the backend setup to find out, but it's daunting!

[rootwork]

oh god that's an unfortunate issue number

[DeeDeeG]

Hi there!

This does sound like a good idea.

Unfortunately, the pace of development here is very much slowed. Past/present contributors and maintainers seem to have mostly moved on. I try to keep updating the dependencies, but the core folks all have full time jobs and not much time for this project. So I'm not really sure existing folks have time to work on this. If you're handy with the code and can submit a proposed implementation, I can do my best to review it, but I'm nervous to accept a big change without the other maintainers' input. They are both better coders than I am, but have also a bit more busy and tied up with other life obligations as of late than myself.

As for existing solutions in the app today: We basically have the contact form where you can ask that a certain restroom be removed... No other official mechanism. (Which requires one of the core maintainers with access to do so to log in and manually hide/un-approve the restroom.) Close to it: there is leaving Disqus comments, which are only available in the web app. Or downvoting, which I believe is surfaced in one or both of the mobile apps. Or as you mention, proposing that the restroom listing be changed to say CLOSED or some such thing.

So back to your suggestion: It does make sense to me, to have a form that simply includes the unique restroom ID, and a free-form text space to explain how you know (and how you can prove? the context/details such as there are any) that it has been closed. (And perhaps a preferred contact email or phone if we have questions for the requester/submitter, but realistically I don't expect we'd use that very often if at all.)

If this does get worked on (by existing contributors/maintainers), I'd suggest @mi-wood particularly would know the most about this area. I think she handles most of the incoming user contacts, for instance. And she was a major contributor/driving force behind the "propose an edit to this restroom" feature. If those edit proposals are still being reviewed (?) it's probably her doing it, I think. And also @tkwidmer is the remaining core maintainer other than myself and @mi-wood.

On another note: We can certainly reopen this as new issue if this number is too haunted/cursed/spooky... 😅