Notes From Nature Talk

Macrofungi Bugs & Enhancements

  • DZM by DZM admin

    We're trying to consolidate all the bugs and enhancements needed/wanted for each project into one place, so that the new developer will be able to address as many as possible once he/she begins work.

    Please post anything that needs to be done, or you would like to be done, to Macrofungi, in this thread. Copy/pastes of old posts are more than welcome.

    Please be as clear as possible about exactly what sort of error is happening, and/or what the enhancement will do. Thank you!

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57

    Enhancement: make the whole image zoom, not just a too-small selected part.

    Posted

  • mlwtt159 by mlwtt159

    Had a couple where the highlighted image isn't the same as the original. Completely different label not just a different bit of it.

    Posted

  • Mr._Kevvy by Mr._Kevvy

    I've noted this numerous times in Herbarium... even when we were on the "mainstream" first batch with tens of thousands of available records I would get the same one twice occasionally on the same account. (I knew this because I had already commented on it.) I was asked to add object comments to this effect if I found them so did several times.

    Posted

  • LG_Price by LG_Price

    Fix Badges!

    Also, it was never clear what part constitutes the "label" Everything or just the part with the barcode?

    Posted

  • colson199 by colson199

    I'm not sure the data being entered is linking to the proper specimen. I found that when I highlighted the data to start the transcription, the entire area highlighted could not be seen when moved to the transcription page, so I made notes from the main screen before highlighting. Unfortunately, the information brought to the transcription page was not the same (not even close!) as the info on the original entry screen. Am I doing something wrong or does the data not link up?

    Posted

  • jaksen by jaksen

    There has to be a way to remove the directions from being superimposed over the labels, or an easier way to just eliminate them. After doing one or two labels, they are not needed. Maybe a button that says: show directions. The user can click it off when no longer needed, but if necessary, can click them back on. I am so frustrated every time I start working on the fungi and the directions will not go away or move into a corner of the screen.

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57

    Pan and zoom in fungi, awesome, thank you Rafe and everyone!

    This makes it MUCH easier to transcribe fungi.

    Blog post: NFN summer update

    Posted

  • reddder by reddder in response to HelenBennett57's comment.

    I heartily second that emotion!!

    Posted

  • keel by keel

    After I log in on the opening page of zooniverse, and I open ‘Notes from Nature’, it
    once more allows me to log in. BUT, after doing one of the projects within this topic, I am
    logged out when moving to a second, third or fourth topic within this project. Do I have to
    log in to each individual project now?

    Secondly, in this same project, in the following topics -
    Macrofungi
    Herbarium - all four topics here, meaning: SE Louisiana Univ. Herbarium; UofS. Florida herbarium; Florida State U herbarium and Botanical research institute of Texas

    they all have a programming issue in that after doing one record in any of them, each site then starts doubling up records on the screen and I can no longer do anything. If I move the cursor, the record hiding behind moves around but not the front record and I need to increase the size of the record to read the material. If i can’t see the record, I can’t do anything.

    I’ve been told once before that I only need to log in on the main page of zooniverse but I have repeatedly found that this isn’t true. Either the programmers need to communicate with each other better and coordinate their programming requirements and needs so that one log-in works with all the projects or you need to make all the projects require a log-in on each. Consistency is better than total chaos, which is the current theme here now.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    I have a few suggestions for the Macrofungi interface.

    1. There's currently no easy way to return to a previously entered field on a specimen if you want to make a correction. The only way you can do it is by skipping a later field, which cycles you back through all the fields. I would like to be able to review and return to a field if necessary, as you can with the bird and crab archives.
    2. I accidentally hit the Finish button when I wasn't done, and the Are You Sure button popped up. I didn't click it, because I didn't mean to finish the entry then. It just stayed there for many entries, until I finally clicked the Finish button again, and then clicked Are You Sure. Normally I never click the Finish button, since the entry auto-enters after you complete the fifth field. I think Are You Sure should be replaced with Skip Entry after you complete the entry which caused it to appear.
    3. Why don't you give us auto-complete lists for Canadian provinces & counties, as you do for the US? It would speed things up.

    I also have a question. Once in a while I run into a date with Roman numerals, e.g. "7-VIII-59". I'm interpreting the Roman numeral as the month, but I don't really know as the few times I've seen it, the numbers have been below 13. Can you tell us whether the Roman numeral refers to the month or the day?

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist in response to maggiej's comment.

    Hi @maggiej

    Thanks for your comments and suggestions.
    For #1 you can click the numbers next to the "Finish This Record" button to go back to one of the fields. They has to be done before you finish the record though.

    Roman numerals are usually only used for month.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    Thanks! I figured out how to get back to a previous field shortly after posting that comment. And I figured out the Roman numerals too. The handwriting is pretty hard to read sometimes, but I am just doing the best I can. Some of the dates span a period of time, like "fall 1929" -- then I am picking a month such as Oct or Nov and leaving the day of month as Not Shown. I figured it's better to have some indication of what time of year it is. Is that acceptable? I'm using Google to find county names if they are missing, although this doesn't work too well for Canada.

    Posted

  • Bonnie123 by Bonnie123 in response to maggiej's comment.

    I use geonames to find the counties, it works much better normally than google as long as you have the correct spelling of the city. . I normally use geonames first and then if that doesn't work I use google, since google is better at giving choices that are close to whatever you spelled (in cases where I do not have the correct spelling of the city). Hope it helps.

    http://www.geonames.org/

    Posted

  • am.zooni by am.zooni

    Another useful site for US counties is http://www.hometownlocator.com/. Since within a state you can list all the places that start with a specified letter, sometimes it can help if the city name is misspelled or if a couple of letters are illegible.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    Thanks, I'll try both of these. I've found Google to be pretty good at finding county names for municipalities but less so for state parks, forests, lakes, etc.

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57

    Hi @am.zooni, @Bonnie123, these look really handy. Would you consider putting them on the "Some useful tools" thread? I don't want to steal your credit 😉

    Posted

  • am.zooni by am.zooni

    Done. (Credit not an issue for me though. Happy to have something useful to contribute.)

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist

    Thanks all. These are great suggestions. I do love Geonames, it has really come in handy for a number of uses over the years.

    Posted

  • Bonnie123 by Bonnie123 in response to HelenBennett57's comment.

    I added it to the other site, was not a worry for me about credit either. I also added a link for a website that shows all the Alt codes that work on a PC, not sure it they work on a Mac or not.

    Helen: not sure what we would do without you, you know the locations to all these old discussions with all this great info. Thanks so much for the Some Useful Tools link.

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57 in response to Bonnie123's comment.

    Aw thanks! Confession: those are ones I keep Followed because they're very handy. I don't do so well with the Search function here.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    When I enter the day portion of a date as '22', it generally (perhaps always) seems to display as '21' instead. Is this happening to other people as well? I am positive I am not typing it in wrong.

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57

    Hiya @maggiej, it's not you! This is a known problem and sadly it seemed to be browsers when it was investigated before, i.e not something that Rafe can address. I've just trained my fingers to go "222" for "22"... kind of bio-find-n-replace.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    The "Transcribe" link is broken -- it just takes me to a general Collections home page. Help! I am suffering from fungi withdrawal.

    Posted

  • am.zooni by am.zooni

    I'm having the same problem on the Herbarium projects. Also having login issues - the ID/Password window doesn't close, although some part of NfN knows who I am because it's letting me post here. Same problems happened here on 3 Dec 2015. I just posted a report about this on the Zooniverse troubleshooting board, hoping that someone there might see it and pass it on to whoever can fix the problem (since the discussion boards here aren't very active).

    Posted

  • am.zooni by am.zooni

    Thanks @maggiej, for adding your info to the Troubleshooting thread on Zooniverse. Last time, @DZM got the problem fixed first thing the morning after it was reported. Let's hope this time it can be resolved just as quickly. I miss my plant specimens!

    For what it's worth, the discussion thread for when this previously happened is here: http://talk.notesfromnature.org/#/boards/BNN0000002/discussions/DNN00006a3

    Posted

  • Bonnie123 by Bonnie123

    Looks like when they removed the old completed Calbug and Crab collections this got messed up, similar to last time.

    Posted

  • LLITTL by LLITTL

    First image after start is correct. After hitting [submit] the website appears to provide two images. One is stationary and amost covers the screen. The other is behind and it is the one moved and zoomed with mouse controls. Not sure which image the form is to be used for?

    Posted

  • Bonnie123 by Bonnie123 in response to LLITTL's comment.

    This is a known glitch that happens sometimes. There is normally no way to transcribe it when there are two because the one normally that you need to transcribe is the one in the back that you cannot see. Normally, I back out of NFN and start again and most of the time it fixes this. Try starting over in NFN and see if you are OK. On rare occasions I have to get out of NFN/Zoo and take a break for a little while and when I come back all is well. Hope that helps.

    I'm getting this in CalBug as well, so I'm reporting it in the Help Board, noting you have the issue in Macro Fungi.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej in response to HelenBennett57's comment.

    Thanks @HelenBennett57 for the '222' tip -- it's working for me. Weird that this only happens with that one number.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    When I transcribe a record, after filling out all 5 fields and clicking OK on the date field (or clicking the Finish button), instead of accepting my record and displaying a new one, the page is displaying the same record over again, still showing the Date field and telling me that all 5 fields are empty. If I fill it out again and try to submit it, the same thing happens. If I refresh the browser, it shows me a new label but the same thing happens with that label.

    Started happening around 3pm this afternoon (PST). I just checked and it's still happening.

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist in response to maggiej's comment.

    Hi @maggiej ,
    I can't recreate this on Firefox on Mac (43.0.1). Can you tell me what Operating System and browser version you are using?
    Thanks

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    Hi @md68135, I am using Firefox 43.0.4 on Windows 7. It's definitely a Firefox issue because IE is working just fine (but I don't really like IE very much). The odd thing that it started happening in the middle of a transcription session. If I had applied a Firefox update and then it stopped working I would understand it. Thanks for looking at it, as I would prefer to use Firefox.

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist in response to maggiej's comment.

    Thanks again. I have put it on our issue tracking system.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    Now that I have been transcribing for a while, I have some comments/questions/requests.

    1. It's too easy to accidentally hit ENTER or click the OK button on the date page without actually entering any dates, and then the record automatically finishes with blank dates. I've done it a number of times.
    2. For this and other reasons, I wish there were a way to recall the most recently entered label and modify it.
    3. Why is Hawaii in the list of countries? Why do you have both United Kingdom and Great Britain?
    4. When a date range is given, how should we enter it? I have just been entering the earliest date.
    5. How should we enter dates before 1880?
    6. How should we enter places like national parks that cover more than one county, when county isn't given? Enter one of the valid counties, or mark as Unknown?
    7. My transcribing life would be improved if you would change the tab sequence on the Date page so that when you tab out of the year field it goes to the OK button instead of the Skip field one.

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57

    And following Maggiej's comments about dates, for the herbarium, please can Rafe comment on the following, and fix it if it's broken?

    • When you finish entering a date and hit the Return key, the drop-down menus flash up and IIRC the fields seem to clear as the page flashes out of sight.
    • Has the data actually been saved (Mr Kevvy's suspicion) or not (mine and I guess Maggiej's)?
    • I keep having to remember to stop typing, get the mouse and manually click the OK button, to enter dates - or feel "dammit, did I enter bad data again?" when I've forgotten. This slows me down and makes me doubt the value of my work.

    Hitting Enter when you've finished entering dates should cause data to be entered for that record. If all the other fields have been completed, then you should get the next record without the drop-down menus flashing up and the data entry fields looking blank.

    Using Chrome.

    Raising this again: it was raised by me and Mr Kevvy a year ago (thread) but didn't go anywhere.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    Regarding HelenBennett57's last post: when using Chrome, I note that the year drop-down box flashes up when you hit ENTER after keying month, day and year. This does not happen with IE or Firefox. I think the dates are being retained, but it's an annoying feature which I often get around by hitting ESC immediately after ENTER. This is the issue that I was referring to in my bullet point #7 in previous post. If tabbing out of the Year field would go to the OK button, I would train myself to do that and then press ENTER.

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist

    Hi All,
    Please see my comments below.

    1. Agreed. Unfortunately this most likely will not be fixed until the new version of NFN is launched in the Spring.
    2. This has been a long standing request and something that we have had discussions with the Zooniverse folks about. It is my understanding that most Zooniverse projects do not support this kind of functionality, but I haven't hunted around much to check.
    3. No idea. I think we need to fix that. Could this date back to when Hawaii was not part of the U.S. For the UK and Great Britain, I think it is to support both of these appearing on a label. I am sure our Zooniverse Oxford colleagues could clarify the bet way to handle this though.
    4. You should enter the first date only.
    5. We need expand the range apparently. For the time being it should be skipped for dates earlier than 1880.
    6. If it can't be pin pointed then you should choose "Unknown County."
    7. Noted

    I believe that the date IS being recorded when the described error happens. If someone wants to give me an approximate time when this happened and which interface they are using, then I can verify with 100% certainty.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    Hi md68135, thanks for your responses! About the last point -- I entered about 30 macrofungi records between 8:00 and 8:30 PST on 1/22 and hit ENTER and ESC upon finishing most of them. If they all came through with dates attached (or with Not Shown), I think we can be assured that hitting ENTER does save and transmit the dates.

    As for Hawaii being in the list of countries, you would think Alaska would be there too if it was because Hawaii didn't use to be a state. But it isn't. And about the United Kingdom and Great Britain both being in the list -- maybe it is to support both of them appearing on a label. But in fact, I've never seen either of them on a label; just England and Scotland.

    I have worked on a couple of other Zooniverse transcription projects and neither of them allowed you to recall the most recent label. But it certainly would be a useful function.

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist in response to maggiej's comment.

    Hi @maggiej,
    It looks like you entered 74 records that day (awesome and thanks so much!). For 12 of them the date did not get recorded. I am not sure if that answers our question or not.
    Other than that, the records look great and appear to have no other issues, blank fields, etc.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    Hi @md68135 -- I am a little disturbed that 12 records were missing dates. I always put in the dates -- at least entering "Not Shown" if a date or part of a date is missing. I might miss it once or twice without realizing it, but not 12 times! This suggests that there can be an issue with hitting ENTER on the date field rather than clicking the OK button -- at least some of the time. I will do a test tomorrow where I submit a batch of records by always hitting ENTER on the date field, and then another batch where I submit all records by clicking OK. I'll give you the time ranges for each and you can check the records and see which ones are missing dates.

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57 in response to md68135's comment.

    Hi @md68135,

    Here's some more test data 😃

    Between 13.30 and 13.46 GMT, 26th Jan 16, I entered 5 Herbarium records from BRIT.
    In each case I hit the Enter key when I finished typing in the dates.

    #1, data existed for all fields

    #2, number was missing (think this affects the behaviour described above)

    #3, data existed for all fields

    #4, collector and number were missing

    #5, data existed for all fields.

    My expectation: I will have recorded the date for records 2 and 4, but the date will have vanished for records 1, 3 and 5.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    Hi @md68135, I too have some more test data, all entered today (1/26).

    • Batch 1: 50 records added between 10:25 and 11:06 PST. On each of these I pressed ENTER while on the Year field and then immediately pressed ESC afterwards (to erase the year pop-up, which annoys me).
    • Batch 2: 50 records added between 11:40 and 12:25 PST. On each of these I pressed the ENTER key while on the Year field and did +not+ press ESC.
    • Batch 3: 50 records added between 13:38 and 14:21 PST. On the first 20 of these I clicked the OK button on the date form with my mouse. Then my hand started to tire, and I switched to back-tabbing three times after keying the year, so that the OK button was selected, and then pressing ENTER. I would expect these two actions to be perceived as identical by the app.

    I await with interest the results of this test, and also the results of HelenBennett57's test.

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist

    Thanks @maggiej and @HelenBennett57!
    I will check these when I get the next data dump (end of each week).

    Just to be clear, none of the "missing" dates were completely empty. They are all had zeros, which I think indicates "Not Shown."

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    Hi @md68135 -- If "Not Shown" dates look like they're missing, you will undoubtedly see missing dates in all 3 of my batches. Maybe you could spot-check a few of these records against the images to see if dates are present on the labels. Our concern is that we are entering dates which, under certain circumstances, are not saved and transmitted to the server. Helen's test should be very helpful in determining whether this is happening.

    If possible, I would also like to find out whether there's any difference between selecting "Not Shown" and just entering the record without selecting anything for the day, month or year field.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    It's hard to believe that we have 22,000 records complete today (52%), when yesterday it was only 13,500. Seems like there's a glitch in the numbers somewhere.

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist in response to maggiej's comment.

    @maggiej -- We just moved the from 4 to 3 transcriptions for the Macrofungi and Herbarium this could account for much of that. With that said, we have had some persistent issues with getting the counts right so it is something that we will look into.

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57 in response to md68135's comment.

    Hi @md68135,

    You said

    Just to be clear, none of the "missing" dates were completely empty.
    They are all had zeros, which I think indicates "Not Shown."

    I'm being slow here, but I don't quite follow. Are you making an assertion (and asking a question) about what we entered, or telling us something about the data that you found in the database for those records?

    When I wrote "x was missing", I meant "that piece of data wasn't available in the source record, so I used Skip Field for that field". The date information was available for all five of the records I entered, so none of them should have appeared as zeroes. I didn't have to use "not shown" for any of the date values.

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist in response to HelenBennett57's comment.

    Hi @HelenBennett57,
    Sorry for not being clear. Let me try that again. I am assuming that when you hit skip that the system enters zeros into the field. In other words, it is not literally blank.
    I still intend to look at the data in the ranges that you and @maggiej provided above, I just haven't gotten to it yet this week (is it already Friday?!).

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57 in response to md68135's comment.

    'Fraid so, @md6813 - it really was Friday! 😃 Gotcha: your assumption was that the system enters zeros when it skips a field. IMO it ought to save a null value for skipping a field. Zero and null are not the same thing. I always use the example that if you're recording, say, a count of fatalities or pollution incidents, recording a zero when actually the user skipped the field because they didn't have that month's data yet, is very bad. What did you find?

    Of course, this is a tangent to the question of what is saved in the date field, when as a user you hit the Return key after typing in the year. The reason I think that earlier missing fields may have an effect on the data that is saved, is that if data in earlier fields is missing and you hit Return after typing the year, you get alerted to the missing data and the system takes you back to the first field. However, if there is NO other missing data, the year drop-down flashes up, and then you get taken straight to the next record.

    Three questions:

    1. What appeared in the non-date fields where data was genuinely missing, in records #2 and #4? Zero or blank?

    2. What appeared in the date fields, for records #2 and #4?

    3. What appeared in the date fields, for records #1, #3 and #5?

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    If you're using Chrome, there's an extension called Aliaser that lets you create shortcuts for names/phrases that you find yourself typing over and over again. It can save you a lot of keystrokes. For instance, whenever I need to enter Tahquamenon Falls State Park, I now just type "tf" and press the Tab key. If you'd like to try it, go to the Chrome Web Store, click on Extensions, and search for Aliaser. It's the one from Daniel Woznicki. Full disclosure: he's my son. That said, I've been using it for a few weeks now and it works quite well. It's simple to add and delete aliases, and you can select the key you want to trigger the substitution. But I find that Tab works quite well for Macrofungi, and it doesn't interfere with the normal tab functions.

    One thing to note: after you add an alias, you have to refresh the page with the circular arrow to make it available.

    I've posted this in the "useful tools" thread, but thought I would put it here as well.

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist in response to HelenBennett57's comment.

    Hi @HelenBennett57,

    I (finally!) checked your test data. I see what you indicated for all #1 - #5 in the data across fields. I also see the date recorded for each of those records. This includes #1, #3 and #5.

    In the interest of thoroughness, I will also answer your question from your post of about 8 days ago.

    "1) What appeared in the non-date fields where data was genuinely missing, in records #2 and #4? Zero or blank?"
    They are not zero or blank. A date is there.

    "2) What appeared in the date fields, for records #2 and #4?"
    A date is also present

    "3) What appeared in the date fields, for records #1, #3 and #5?"
    A date is also present

    I also checked other volunteers transcriptions for the same images and the dates match, so I assume that this is good news. What else did I miss here? What did we learn?

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist in response to maggiej's comment.

    Hi @maggiej,

    I need to ask you about the dates you provided. I see a bunch of entries for you on 1/26, but I can't seem to match the time correctly to test these transcriptions. When you say PST, I assume you mean Pacific Standard right? That is 8 hours behind UTC?

    One interesting thing that I noticed was that the zero dates seem to be only in the Macrofungi data. I hadn't noticed this before, because I mostly work with the herbarium data on the science side of things.

    Sorry again for being slow, but I do want to track this down.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    Hi @md68135,

    You're having trouble matching my entries up because I got the date wrong. They were actually entered on 1/25, not 1/26. Sorry about that! Yes, I do mean Pacific Standard Time.

    I think Macrofungi dates are different from Herbarium ones, although I haven't done any Herbarium transcription. I'm going by what HelenBennett57 has said. Here is what I know about Macrofungi dates:

    1. Month, day and year are three separate fields and all are restricted, i.e. you have to choose from a drop-down list.
    2. Each field has a Not Shown list member in addition to the valid months/days/years.
    3. When the page is first displayed, nothing is selected for any of the three fields; they say "--Month--" , "--Day--" and "--Year--" respectively.
    4. It is unfortunately possible to accidentally click OK without entering anything for any of the fields. This will complete the record without giving you any warning or a second chance to fill out the dates.
    5. It is also possible to select "Not Shown" for any or all of the three date fields; this allows us to enter partial dates, e.g. "March 1905" or indicate that the date is completely missing.

    I was very careful not to accidentally miss entering the date fields while I was creating my test data. So #4 above does not explain any zeros you find in my dates. However, there are always records with one or more date fields missing. If you have access to the label images and are able to pull up an image by id#, you should be able to check on whether my entry matches what's on the label. For example, if I entered March 1905, the label should show that date with no day of month given. If the day in my transcribed record is 00, that tells me that "Not Shown" is translated to zero in the database.

    If you find zeros in my date fields for specimens that actually have dates, that indicates that my entered date is not getting updated into the database. If you find this kind of situation to be common in one of my batches, but not the other two, that will tell me what I am physically doing during data entry that is preventing the update from completing normally. It's probably unnecessary to say that I sincerely hope you DON'T find this to be the case, but that the zeros in my date fields correspond to missing date elements on the labels.

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57 in response to md68135's comment.

    Hi @md68135,

    Brilliant! One thing we've learnt, the date is definitely saved in Herbarium records when you hit Return after entering it, even though the UI goes funny.

    That is seriously good news: it's going to speed up my transcriptions because I can use the keyboard more than I thought.

    Thank you very much for doing the research and putting up with some very pedantic questions 😃

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57 in response to maggiej's comment.

    Hey @maggiej - I will try out Aliaser! I'm using ClipX very heavily but will give this a go too.

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist in response to HelenBennett57's comment.

    No problem @HelenBennett57! I always appreciate you ideas and perspective.

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist in response to maggiej's comment.

    Hi @maggiej, Thanks for your patience.
    I was able to match them and the data looks excellent!

    How you enter the date seems to have no bearing on the data that gets recorded. All dates are formatted the same and exist in the fields as expected. You should be able to enter it as you wish!

    The macrofungi interface does enter a zero (actually 2) for the "Not Shown" data. This was news to me as the herbarium interface does not do this. This is probably not what I would have chosen, so I have to go back and talk to the team about this issue. As @HelenBennett57 noted null is not the same as 0.

    I hope this helps and thanks so much again for your help and patience.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    Hi @md68135,

    Thanks for verifying the date entry! It does make a difference, as it's much easier to hit ENTER on the keyboard than to mouse over to the Enter button and click it. I'm happy to know that i can do that without compromising the data.

    It's possible that the Macrofungi developers reserved 'null' for date fields where nothing at all was selected, not even the Not Shown option. If so, a query for null date fields should return a small dataset. I know i have entered records with no date selection at least a dozen times (by accident), and if I have done it probably other people have too. If I were the developer on this app, I would definitely have made a distinction between "Not Shown" and "user did not select any value from the list".

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    I've been transcribing fungi for a couple of months now, and I have accumulated some questions. Most of them do not affect my transcription, but they are lingering in my mind so I thought I'd post them here and see if anybody has any answers.

    1. I was always taught never to taste an unknown plant (especially fungi) because it could be poisonous. Yet these collectors routinely taste their specimens. Why didn't they all die untimely deaths?
    2. Why do you sometimes see measurement figures in parentheses? Example: 3-7 (8.5) x 2.5-3 µ.
    3. Some of the specimens we're transcribing are over 100 years old. What can a 100-year-old mushroom be used for?
    4. Many labels have lists of individual measurements, often without even a heading to say what they are. I have been transcribing them, but sometimes I wonder if this is really useful information. Will unidentified lists of numbers be helpful to you?
    5. My understanding is that each label will be transcribed 4 times, and I can see how that will help you to locate and eliminate transcription errors for most fields. But how are you going to compare and merge 4 transcriptions of the locality/habitat text field, with their inevitable typos, different readings of illegible handwriting, variations in the order in which scattered phrases are transcribed, and differing punctuation? Seems like a massive task.

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist in response to maggiej's comment.

    Hi @maggiej,

    Here are some answers.

    1. Good question. I am pretty cautious myself, but when I do taste I usually have a good idea of whether the plant or fungus has any potential of being poisonous. For example the carrot family (Apiaceae) has many excellent edibles, but also some very deadly plants. For this reason, I very rarely do any taste tests at all with this family. There are a few example of collectors dying, but I can't recall a specific example at the moment. As an aside, I am on several plant/fungi ID groups on social media and I frequently cringe when I hear how quickly people are willing to eat some things.

    2. Extremes are put in parentheses. For example 3-7(8.5) would translate to 3 to 7, but sometimes/rarely as much as 8.5

    3. You can still do anatomical work, look at spores, etc. DNA can also be extracted from specimens of this age.

    4. Yeah, these can be tough for sure. Sometimes it takes knowing the habits of a specific collector of monographer to really know what is meant. These kinds of measurements often don't lend well to being data mined, but can be used when someone looks individually at specific specimens.

    5. Actually now 3 as of a few weeks ago. It is a big task and is not always straight forward. We are actually investigating this again with the launch of the new Noted From Nature. Here is an example of some previous work that we did.
      https://soyouthinkyoucandigitize.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/412/

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    Thanks @md68135. That was quick! And as a bonus, you answered question #6, namely, why did our percent complete suddenly jump from 32% to 52% 3 weeks ago? I was also interested to read about the application of sequencing methods to this type of task. It will be informative to see how it works when used for some of the long text fields we are transcribing. I suspect you will end up with a lot of X's on some of those labels.

    And now that you have encouraged me by answering my first questions, I have a few more to ask.

    1. There's a certain fungus wood rot study form with location, collector, date, habitat etc. on the left side, and on the right there is space for Spore Measurements and Hymenial Accessories. Spore measurements given here are often followed by zero to 3 dashes and then usually a sketch of the spore. What do those dashes represent?
    2. I've seen some Canadian labels (can't remember now if it's a university or a forestry ministry) where a Lake Timagami location is given like this: "Bear I., L. Temagami, T.F.R., Ont." What does T.F.R. mean? I've tried googling it but can't find any information.
    3. In the same vein, I occasionally see a label where an altitude in meters is given like so: "Alt. 250 m.s.m." Do you know what m.s.m. means? I assume the first m. is for meters; I've never seen it where an elevation is given in feet. This is another one I've googled without success.

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist in response to maggiej's comment.

    Hi @maggiej,

    So glad my sometime slow reply isn't deterring you from continuing to ask questions.

    1. I think I better see the example. Fungal notes and measurements can be very, very detailed. As you may know the main reason for this is that many of the characteristics can be lost when the fruiting body dries out, so it is best to capture them when fresh from the field. Can you tag me in an image comment next time you see that?

    2. This is a guess, but Bear Island is part of the Temagami First Nation. Maybe the r is for reservation?

    3. I think it is meters above sea level. It is more commonly written as MAMSL or MASL.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    Thank you, @md68135! Yes, I will tag you in an image comment the next time I run across one of those study forms with the dashes.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    I don't know what changed, but Chrome has started working again for Macrofungi. It now updates my finished record and presents a new one after I enter the date. Firefox still refuses to update my finished record and just redisplays it for me with all the fields erased. But Chrome is my preferred browser for Macrofungi, so I'm pretty happy with the current situation. Whatever you just did, don't undo it!

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist in response to maggiej's comment.

    Fantastic news!

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    I'm having a lot of trouble getting labels to display for Macrofungi. Every 3 or 4 labels I get a blank screen. Sometimes I have to hit Refresh 2 or 3 times to get a new label to come up. Very time-consuming.

    Posted

  • maggiej by maggiej

    Now I can't get any Macrofungi labels at all. Hope this can be fixed. Are other people having this problem?

    Posted

  • maggiej2 by maggiej2 in response to maggiej's comment.

    I think I've discovered what my problem was. I maxed out on the number of labels transcribed. When I signed out and attempted to transcribe manually, I had no problem getting and transcribing labels. So I've created a second account with an alternate email address in order to continue. I am now maggiej2. You folks might want to think about increasing the max number of labels for a user.

    Posted

  • am.zooni by am.zooni

    Wow, that impressive! Also, good detective work!

    Posted

  • maggiej2 by maggiej2

    I'm just assuming it's related to how many labels I transcribed; but what I'm sure of is that it has something to do with my user account. I transcribed over 200 labels today under my new id with nary a problem.

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist

    I think you are correct. Now that we are getting close to finishing Macrofungi there may not be any that you haven't done already. This usually only happens to super power users : )
    Thanks so much for your amazing efforts. Any chance of moving over to help finish the herbarium collection?

    Posted

  • maggiej2 by maggiej2 in response to md68135's comment.

    Actually, I'm pretty sure I ran across a few yesterday (under my new id) that I had not seen before. Also, there are many that I have transcribed at least twice. So I'm having trouble seeing how this could be the explanation.

    Yes, I will probably move over to the Herbarium when we're done here (which will happen within the next two weeks!). I like transcribing, as you may have deduced.

    Posted

  • am.zooni by am.zooni

    I second that suggestion. Come on in, the water's fine! There are just short of 8000 images still to be completed for the SELU Herbarium, so there's plenty of work to do.

    Posted

  • maggiej2 by maggiej2 in response to am.zooni's comment.

    Aww, it's nice to be wanted! Okay, I will see you in the Herbarium in a week or two. I may post some questions for you while I'm getting started, to make sure I'm doing it right.

    Posted

  • maggiej2 by maggiej2

    Once again I am having the problem where you complete a transcription, but upon entering it, instead of getting a new label the same label is displayed with all the transcription fields blanked out.

    Posted

  • maggiej2 by maggiej2

    I am still unable to enter labels, either in Macrofungi or in the Herbarium... I see that other people are transcribing; why isn't it working for me? (See previous post)

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57 in response to maggiej2's comment.

    Have you tried clearing your cache/cookies? As a solution it's a bit of a blunt instrument/voodoo, but it worked for me one time before.

    Posted

  • md68135 by md68135 scientist in response to maggiej2's comment.

    I am wondering if this is because you have nothing left to transcribe. Both of these are getting close to the end.

    Posted

  • maggiej2 by maggiej2 in response to HelenBennett57's comment.

    I just tried that... but no luck.

    Posted

  • maggiej2 by maggiej2 in response to md68135's comment.

    I thought it might be that, so I signed out and tried to transcribe anonymously. But I still had the same problem. The label is presented to me, I transcribe it, click OK and the same label remains on the screen with all the fields blanked out. A couple of weeks ago when I used up all my available transcriptions under the maggiej name, I had a different problem: I couldn't get the program to even display a label to me. Now I get the label, but I can't submit my transcription.

    I also tried doing a label in the Herbarium, where I have not done a single transcription, and I had the same problem there. So I think this is a different issue.

    Posted

  • maggiej2 by maggiej2 in response to maggiej2's comment.

    I've found a workaround -- private browsing! I'm not crazy about it as I can't use Aliaser in this mode (Helen will understand my distress at this!). But at least I can transcribe now. I've been working on macrofungi for over 6 months and have done over 25,000 transcriptions. I would have been really disappointed if I couldn't be in at the finish!

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57 in response to maggiej2's comment.

    25,000?!!! [dizzy] [faint] [bow down] I thought I was doing well with nearly 3k!

    Yes, I feel your pain. ClipX will help but only within one session (unless you keep e.g. a separate spreadsheet to load up ClipX from - I now do that in work where I also have to do some quite tedious repetitive typing).

    Posted

  • am.zooni by am.zooni

    Ditto @HelenBennett57 's expressions of astonishment!!!

    Posted

  • maggiej2 by maggiej2 in response to am.zooni's comment.

    I am somewhat obsessive and rather competitive. Not characteristics of which I am terribly proud, but they have their uses. I hope to assist with finishing up the fungi, and if possible to transcribe the final record, even if I have to do it anonymously (which is likely!).

    Posted

  • am.zooni by am.zooni in response to maggiej2's comment.

    The fact that you're jumping through hoops to play musical chairs with userids to keep working says a lot about your perseverance!

    There are still approx 5000 incomplete Herbarium images but they are quick to work on and (based on the images people post comments about) mostly far easier to read than the Fungus labels. Most of the Herbarium labels are typed, for starters. More people appear to be working on them than ever comment or than I see logged in during my short visits, because the count is decreasing pretty steadily and faster since the announcement that NfN wanted to wrap up the current collections ASAP.

    I just checked (haven't worked there yet myself) and are also about 1300 ornithology images to complete, and either hardly anyone works on them, or they don't have much to comment about.

    Posted

  • maggiej2 by maggiej2 in response to am.zooni's comment.

    I've done a few ornithology ones. They are very tedious and time-consuming, as you have to do an entire page at one shot. And often it's the same species and location over and over again, and there's no dup key. Also, this may have been fixed by now, but when I was working on them your record count went up during the session but was not saved, so every day you're starting over again at zero.

    Posted

  • maggiej2 by maggiej2 in response to am.zooni's comment.

    Macrofungi is DONE!

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57 in response to maggiej2's comment.

    ClipX (clipboard manager) really is invaluable for Ornithology. It lets you do those duplicated items much faster.

    I know I keep banging on about it, but it's changed my life - how sad does that sound?! It's certainly helped with RSI-type problems in work.

    Posted

  • maggiej2 by maggiej2 in response to HelenBennett57's comment.

    Don't worry Helen, if I decide to give Ornithology another try I'll definitely get ClipX. At the moment I'm helping to finish up the Herbarium and Aliaser is fine for that.

    Posted