This post, though it looks personal, would like to bring forward one of the problems I’m going through as Koprol users and its process in adding venue, which might not only happened to me, but also to others. One of the features provided related to adding venue is Curator. This facility differs Koprol from similar service such as Gowalla.

Curator is in charge for approving or disapproving venue addition venue suggestions submitted by Koprol’s users. Every submission of venue suggestion will be checked and verified by curators. Everyone can be curators, by actively provide useful information in Koprol.

From explanation on Koprol’s blog, they appointed curators to maintain venue quality so that it cannot be duplicated and more manageable. They are also authorized to eliminate strange venues such as “20th floor toilet” or “my bed”.

The point was to provide a more manageable and relevant venue, however in implementation this curation process takes longer time.  There are some processes to go through before suggested venue can be made available on Koprol, even worse it may be denied. And that, was what happened to me. I submit one place (HackerspaceBDG) three times and received notification email two times saying that the venue was denied, their reason being that I have to review map coordinate accuracy, venue’s name, category, and address.

OK, that looks normal, and it means I need to revise my submission. The thing was I’ve done it three times, and after trying everything possible to revised location coordinate and filled in almost every blanks there was (except for some details, simply because it is not available, such as office phone number). The notification emails were also not quite cooperative by not mentioning in details which mistake I should correct so that I can get my venue suggestion approved.

And to make things more complicated, the venue’s business account was made already and now available on Koprol, and I cannot claim the venue for check in purposes because Koprol do not approve it even though I use the same name with its business account. I just get even more frustrated because when I submitted my suggestion for the 3rd time, I did it with one of my friends’ help. And guess what? He is one of the curators.

When the venue’s suggestion was posted to Koprol, unfortunately it didn’t make it to my friend’s curating page. When we look through it, Koprol gave us information that the venue suggested had probably been added and that we should wait for the Curators to approve the venue.

I probably have done some mistakes during submitting the venue’s suggestion or I missed other process I should’ve gone through. I don’t know if this also happens to other Koprol users, however when I tweet about it, one of my friends replied and he also complained about the process in suggesting venues.

Well, I like Koprol and am a user (although not an avid one) and I agree that curation process provides certain comfort, at least no weir and funny venues appear on Koprol, and the data can be maintained. On the other hand, venue’s suggestion will take longer time and if what happened to me also happened to everybody else, that may prevent them from adding more venues when there are some places I go to a lot are not listed on Koprol. I am an avid Gowalla user, and those venues are available already on Gowalla, which makes me prefer to check in through Gowalla instead.

One simple input for Koprol, they should encourage their curators to be more active, and Koprol can also create and exclusive community for the curators so that users are encouraged to get active and really correct every venues suggested, verify them if necessary, not only through Koprol but also by email or other media the users use.

AFAIK, Koprol also implements point system for curators. This facility can be maxed up so that curators are encouraged to curate more venues.

I’ve been commenting on this curator thing several times, from my Koprol’s status, or once mentioned about it in another article. So, Koprol, I ask you (again), is this curator facility made to frustrate users? I say, it is.

Picture source Jonwatson, under CC license and thanks to Rangga for one of the screenshots.

Translated by Nita Sellya.