Can I ask for people's thoughts regarding the labelling of photos uploaded to the site ??
Personally I would prefer them, as a form of standard, to always have the species name (both Vernacular AND Binomial (where the species has a Vernacular Name - otherwise just the Latin/Scientific Binomial)) as well as site name and possibly Grid Ref where there is public access.
What do others think/feel ??
Cheers.
Steve
I think we should just keep it to a minimum of scientific name and let people decide what extra information they want to put down. You can always ask the photographer for more details. I'm trying not to put too many restrictions to this feature at the moment.
I feel that the pics should be labelled in such a way that the details are still visible once you've clicked on the image. Even more relevent, if you click on a pic and then scroll to the next/previous image there are NO details at all on view as to what the species on show actually is - which isn't much use! Surely this wouldn't be too tricky to fix? I did raise this issue on the FB page before the site went live. Also, I'm just wondering, are the pictures serving a purpose or are they just there to look pretty and brighten up the site and for folks to show off their best efforts (sorry, I know that sounds really sarky - not my intention) because at the moment I can't see a way to search through them for ID purposes, which I'm guessing is the whole point of them being up there? This isn't a Flickr account full of glorious pics, it's supposed to be an educational resource for keen naturalists, right? It's like having a storebox full of glorious specimens perfectly pinned without any data labels - beautiful but scientifically pointless.
I would agree Seth and it is where I was heading to with my original comment - if a search facility is implemented for the photos then some form of standardisation and the provision of 'enough' information becomes particluarly important.
I think we need to see what it develops into, I would say this function is BOTH like a fancy flickr account AND a visual reference collection (see Steven Falk's Flickr account as an example). We do need a good way of being able to search through the images, that's for sure. I'll ask about that next week.
I forgot to say that there is already a 'species category' set up for the photo archive with the same categories as the breakdown. If we all use this it will be eaiser to find the photos. I'll write some guidance.
Thanks Graeme - that sounds like an excellent idea !
Tried uploading a couple of pics today to see how it goes together. First off, maybe there's a plan for this going forward, so forgive me if I've missed that.
I think that things are going to get very sticky once a few photos are uploaded in broad groups. Right now there are a few vascular plants, for example, but it will be completely unmanageable/unsearchable if they aren't split up more and have some kind of standard for labelling. Vascular plants could do with being split along major taxonomic lines? I would also say that moss/liverwort needs to be separated . This is where I first noticed that "liverwort" produced no match. It'll be tricky enough navigating through 800 species of moss that will eventually be here ;)
I think that if photos aren't categorised from the off it will be a headache to do it retrospectively.
Once inside a group ordering is going to be a question, where taxonomic shifts can affect the ordering. Maybe alphabetic by binomial within a group?
I'm hoping that it can become an ID reference bank. Otherwise I'm not sure what it would be for
Cheers, Ali
Can I add plea for scientific name to be included in all cases.
Agreed Dave and agreed Ali. Even searching beetles is going to be tricky. Tho I appreciate the setting up may be trickier than we think, and requires someone to actually do it.