Suburb/History

The DangerMap System

before the Dangermap System

the Dangermap System style

• Before

Before the current DangerMap system, the Urban Dead wiki had a 10x10 table with the names of every suburb, danger levels for each suburb shown as different colors for the borders of each cell. This style not only provided poor visual feedback for the users, but also was hard to maintain, since every danger level was hard coded into the table with HTML markup. This could lead to customized danger levels, such as purple or blue, or simply break the entire table.

While this system was highly inefficient, it was because it existed before the current DangerMap System was created.

• First Version

The first version of the DangerMap system used the same old table to input the danger levels, but now it provided a better visual output for users. It no longer used hard coded HTML markup, but used a system based on templates. It also provided a way for users to timestamp their danger reports inside the table, which was not available in the previous version.

While providing a better visual output, this table was also hard to maintain, and there was no integration with the suburb pages.

• Second Version

The second version was created with two things in mind: to make it easy to update the table; and to provide a way to integrate the data from the DangerMap with the then recently created {{suburb}} template. This system provided a way to update every cell of the table independently, by updating a user template that was created for each suburb. No longer were edit conflicts an issue when editing the DangerMap in the Suburbs page.

With the data from the DangerMap system, it was now possible to provide not only the DangerMap system, but to automatically update the 9-suburb template on each suburb page. Other systems could be set up use the reports as they saw fit. One edited report could end up changing more than 10 pages.

When this template was created, there was little knowledge about how the MediaWiki framework works, thus the templates for the danger levels of each suburb were stored as subpages of the DangerReport user. Back then, the regular pages as templates exploit was thought to only work with pages inside the user namespace, and pages that abused this exploit didn't showed up in the used templates list when editing a page; this way when editing the Suburbs page a user wouldn't see the more than 100 templates being used in that page. After the MediaWiki framework was updated, however, this exploit became useless, causing several new users to ask themselves why the system was made this way.

• Current Version

The third, and current, version displays content in exactly the same manner as its predecessor. The method of updating the DangerReport pages was changed to use a new set of status templates, and make it easier for the user to update without error by providing visual feedback and instructions on the page, as opposed to the previous system where only the resulting formatting text was ever seen. The system also allows other pages and templates more flexibility in setting up their templates by allowing statuses to be directly referenced, as opposed to relying on the output text of the old template system which meant changes to such templates broke maps.

• The Danger Levels

Initially the Second version, and all previous versions, only had four different danger levels: Safe, Moderate, Dangerous & Very Dangerous. The exact guidelines of when a suburb was at each one of these levels always created month-length discussions in the Suburb talk page, and there might still be ongoing discussions on it to change these guidelines. A fifth status was created in 2007: Ghost Town.

A different set of templates is used for noteworthy suburbs. This set will bold the text for such noteworthy suburbs, indicating their importance.

• Critics

While being a really helpful tool for the Urban Dead community, the Suburb DangerMap System has been criticized of being impartial, biased, exaggerated, and, on some occasions, outdated. Some of these criticisms might be true, since the system depends on user input based on an incomplete set of guidelines. A suburb can easily be Safe for someone and Dangerous for another, the difference being on where and how the players made the survey.

Some of these criticisms may have been exacerbated by the way the danger map is used by some as a measure of a group's success in an area.

The system was also prone to Propaganda. Some Survivors groups always tried to make their home suburbs appear safe in the DangerMap system, while zombies were trying to make them look Very Dangerous. Some users would use the system to provide misinformation, so that others would avoid dangerous burbs, or lure them to safe burbs that were actually being overrun by zombies.

And, finally, since the system depends on user input, this requires people to live in the suburb and be an active user in the wiki. The southern suburbs often have their danger levels unchanged for long periods of time, since only a few group of survivors actually live in them, while the northern suburbs have their danger levels changed almost daily, due the constant history of sieges and battles that happens there.

The Record

This page was created for the sake of keeping track of the evolution of the danger levels of each suburb in Malton, keeping a record of screenshots taken from the Suburb page. A partial archive of the suburb page can be found here; please make screen shots of it to fill the gaps in the record.

New monthly headers goes on the bottom.

Most Recent Screenshot

CaptainVideo 02:56, 18 April 2009 (BST)

2009

April

• 

  2009, April 1

• Suburbs 4-04-2009.PNG

  2009, April 4

• Suburbs 4-05-2009.PNG

  2009, April 5

• -- 4-5-2009.PNG

  2009, April 6

• -- 4-7-2009.PNG

  2009, April 8

• -- 4-9-2009.PNG

  2009, April 9

• -- 4-11-2009.PNG

  2009, April 11

• -- 4-15-2009.PNG

  2009, April 15

• -- 4-16-2009.PNG

  2009, April 16

• -- 4-17-2009.PNG

  2009, April 17

Archive

Screenshot galleries for current and previous months should be displayed, older - moved to the archive.

e Suburb DangerMap History Image Archive

2005 Sep Oct Nov Dec 2006 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2007 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2008 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2009 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2010 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2011 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2012 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2013 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2014 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Map Records

For Days in which a record number of Ghost Town, Very Dangerous, or Safe Suburbs were reached

Very Dangerous Suburbs	Safe Suburbs	Ghost Towns
2008, April 17	Suburbs 2-11-2009.PNG 2009, February 11	2008, May 12
Highest count: 72	Highest count: 40	Highest count: 13
2008, January 23	2008, March 25 041208.PNG 2008, December 4
Lowest count: 3	Final lowest count: 0

External Links

• 100 days in Urban Dead (video) - 100 days in Urban Dead, ending in 2007, November 25, by DanceDanceRevolution.
• 200 days in Urban Dead (video) - The much awaited sequal, featuring double the content!