June 2023: Illinois Review Finished and Wisconsin Under Way
In June 2023 we finished reviewing Illinois, reviewed 137 of Wisconsin's 214 listings and added a net 19 pools. This update also explains what a listing review involves and features a Wisconsin Pool of the Month.
We finished reviewing Illinois in June 2023 and started on Wisconsin, and the directory gained a net 19 pool listings. For readers who have wondered what a listing review involves, this update explains.
Site activity
After finishing Illinois, we moved on to Wisconsin and got through 137 of its 214 listings. We also did more work in Wales and Ireland, to keep the listings in English-speaking countries from getting too far out of date.
In July we plan to wrap up Wisconsin, start work on Minnesota, and continue reviewing the listings in Wales, Ireland and Italy.
What is a review?
We begin each monthly update with the areas we are reviewing, so here is what that means.
We keep a spreadsheet of the site's listings. To review a location, we sort the data by country, state, county or region, city, postal code and pool ID, then work down the list one listing at a time.
For each facility we check the website, name, complete address, telephone number, email address and map link. Facilities change names often, and street names change too. Website addresses are the least stable of these details, and telephone numbers change often as well.
After checking the Facility Overview and Location data, we try to update the casual, drop-in admission price. For listings in the United States, if we cannot find a current price on the pool's website, we call the facility and ask. For listings elsewhere we send an email, often using an online translation tool to write the message in the local language. We have written in just about every language that uses the Latin alphabet, and in a few that use Hebrew, Chinese or Japanese characters.
We do not ordinarily check the Pools & Boards data, which stays stable in 99% of cases. While reviewing a facility's website and the photographs on its map listing, though, we sometimes find details that improve a description.
In the Teams section, we check every team link. If a link has gone bad, we look for a replacement, and if we cannot find one, we delete the team from the listing.
In Facility Notes, most notes need little work, but they often include helpful links, which we check too. We also look for information about seasonal, non-qualifying pools in the area to add to a listing. Many facilities use a social media page for up-to-the-moment schedule changes, so when we find a good one, we add a note about it.
While reviewing, we often find facilities that are not on the site. We pause the review to collect the data for a new listing, which we add later.
