Feature: We need a way to process user-submitted locations from our "Suggest New Listing" form

[fancyham]

• Dev lead: Is this something that's easy to do? Does this already exist but we're not using it?

Context

I believe that right now, our "Suggest a New Listing" form puts that collected info into our database… which we then ignore, because we don't have a way to see those submissions.

These submissions are going into a black hole, never to be seen again.

We need to create a process to see these submissions and add them to our database, or have volunteers validate them.

We need a process

The process should be something like this:

1. Be alerted about new submissions,
2. Review submissions queue
3. Check if submission is already in our database,
4. Create a new listing from the submitted information
5. Send new listing to be validated by volunteers
6. Remove submission from queue

Proposed new feature

• For Admin users, create a page that lists the queue of Suggested New Listings, add a menu item for this page in the hamburger menu.
• For Admin users, create a notification that there are Suggested New Listings waiting to be processed. This can be a badge in the menu (red dot when something needs to be reviewed on hamburger menu icon, or on the menu item itself.
• (nice to have) - An easy way to search our database to see if that location already exists in our database.
• (nice to have) - Create a way to transfer the submitted new listing info into a listing stub to reduce manual copy and paste, and to reduce errors.
• Come up with an easy to follow process and assign someone to it (this person is probably the FOLA volunteer coordinator)
• Create a way to mark a suggested listing item as 'processed or done' and archive it
  • (stretch) Add a timestamp of when it was marked as 'done'.
  • Have a note field for admin comments of how it was processed. (i.e "This was already in the database" or "New listing created" (perhaps with a link to the listing?)

Stretch goal:

• (very nice to have, but probably not easy) - Make the "Suggest a New Listing" public form field match as much as possible our actual database entry fields. This could potentially save even more time. Perhaps a submission creates a 'draft' listing in our database that an admin then turns into a real one (that needs to be validated by volunteers).

Discussion

Our website is current, but also out-dated. We have not added new listings/locations since 2021, and so while our information is accurate for anyone already listed as of 2021, we are missing many new locations that have appeared since then.

We need to have a way to stay current.

This might also mean dedicating cohort of volunteers look for new/missing listings (and using this form)