Planner Choosing Overnight Stops

[Rob Clive]

This might seem a silly / trivial question but how does the planner decide whether a place is suitable for an overnight stop?
I've just returned from a trip up the Llangollen (or Langolan as some people we met would have it).  On the way back Canalplan proposed that we stop overnight at 'Grindley Brook Lockside Cafe and Stores'.  Now there's not a lot of mooring there and short of mooring in the staircase which I expect would be frowned upon nowhere close by either.  Indeed we're not supposed to moor anywhere in the flight.
Could I edit the entry for the lockside cafe in some way so it's no longer considered suitable to stop?  Or is it something an administrator would have to do?  I did try voting on the quality of the mooring, setting it to 1: Impossible but this doesn't seem to worry Canalplan.

[Stephen Atty]

Each place has a mooring rating - the idea was that the overnight stops could use this to pick \"better\" places to stop (either stopping a little earlier or pushing on a little bit more) but as with so many things - it only works once you get a critical mass of data.... without it it just doesn't work.

So at the moment Canalplan will just avoid stopping in places where it knows you shouldn't stop.

[Administrator]

To expand on this.  It avoids lock flights and tidal waters unless a place is marked as a \"haven\".  It doesn't avoid places with a low mooring score (nor bias stopping points towards those with a high score).  That wouldn't be particularly difficult to implement, but as Steve has said, relies on there being a reasonable amount of data.

It is important to remind people though that the idea of CanalPlan is most definitely not that you stop exactly where it tells you to - it's to help you work out where you might get to, and to know whether you are generally on, ahead or behind schedule as you travel.

[Laurence]

I have just submitted a feature request for overnight stop planning to include consideration of mooring place suitability https://canalplan.org.uk/bugtrack/view.php?id=402

I see that this is also being discussed in this forum so though I would add my thoughts here (rather than discuss this in the feature request history)

While I appreciate the issue of needing to clean up the mooring rating data, it might be a circular issue, users might enter more accurate mooring rating if they felt CP would take notice of the ratings.

However many places are clearly moorings as they are described as either 'moorings' or 'visitor moorings' in the place title.
Some users may consider that most places on the network are suitable places to stop, whereas others may be particularly looking for designated mooring places. An option (in planning preferences) to preferably select places with 'mooring' in the title go some way to satisfy both camps and would not require reference to mooring ratings.  Implementation this might be a suitable half way house until users like me have travelled enough to have updated mooring ratings.

Keep up the good work
Laurence