Updating Countries

This document outlines the process for reviewing and updating a country or state. The goal is to apply a systematic approach across a geography for moderators who have been trained with RadioMill.

A market is a country, state or major metropolitan area. The project is done by country to develop familiarity of the major networks, cities and common languages. For this project, it is critical to get the correct station name, frequency and language, and to confirm streaming. See the full station data rules.

Process Summary

1. Update all items that list incorrect cities.
   • Note: Repair existing repeaters, but do not add new repeaters. (Repeaters are listed by affiliate — not by country.)
2. Reference an outside source to help understand major radio networks, cities and formats. (These are especially useful when translation is difficult.)
3. Check outside streaming sources for missing streams.
4. Consolidate duplicates for each region.

Update Incorrect Cities

Detailed instructions are defined in steps A and D of Updating a Station’s Region. In summary:

• Use the region analyzer tool to browse to the country and market. Editors with moderator rights will have an “Analyze” link on the RadioMill location browse.
• Click “Show Station Densities” to create a picture of all stations on the map. It will also show a list of every station in the parent region that may belong in a sub-region but has not been placed because it does not have a verified city.
• Update the city by editing individual stations.

Check Outside Sources for an Overview

Look for an accurate local guide of stations which explains national networks and includes city, frequency and format information. You can assess the quality of market guides by how many of the streams and Web pages work. Wikipedia is usually a good source for this information.

Check Outside Streaming Sources

Use other streaming radio sources to confirm RadioMill includes every working station listed. This is one of the most critical steps and can be done as an independent project.

Check reciva and tvradioworld who all have good international coverage. (See the list of external sources.) For each station that plays:

1. Search RadioMill for the station keyword.
   1. Look for obvious duplicates or wrong locations in search results — but do not update repeater networks.
   2. Add the station, if necessary.
   3. Collect and update the stream
2. Check the station Web site for any alternative streams.

Duplicate streams cannot be added. If adding a stream that is part of another station, you’ll get a warning and a link to the existing station/stream. Check the other station to decide if these are duplicates to be consolidated or if one of the streams is wrong.

Check Station Keywords

You’ll often find stations and repeaters for a national network. (Repeaters offer the identical audio for a local frequency.)

To sort through these, always search a few keywords and eliminate common words. “Radio Italia” might be under “R Italia.” Also search for keywords that are part of the domain name. They also help find the station if we already have one.

Identify and Consolidate Duplicates

With all the stations updated in the correct locations, now look for duplicate information. Detailed instructions are defined in Identifying and Consolidating Duplicate Stations. In summary, duplicates have:

• the same frequency in the same city.
• duplicate names.

These are hints for spotting duplicates. However, they are not always reliable. Look for other information to confirm a duplicate station (e.g. different stations with the same name; different networks in the same group).