A test of an 8 fig Ref. I typed in HY 3815 0645 the exact centre of a six-fig ref.
Whilst the box only ‘likes’ 6 figs, it accepted the location, converting it immediately to the correct Lat/Long but leaving only 6 figs in the box.
If nothing else it has allowed me to locate the exact centre of the squate. It shows on my map.
I will amend it to TEN figs to see what happens - though the lat/long is correct to Cms I think
I have a decent GPS Locator but today is a bad day as NATO are bombing and shelling Cape Wrath, so GPS is wobbled. Poor those white van guys! https://www.ispotnature.org/communities/uk-and-ireland/view/observation/748012/test-post
EXACT LOCATION to 1m OS (from the Observation)
No: there is also a bug if you type in your localities that corrupts them: lots of people dont notice this corruption.
Among regular users they have had to resourt to copy pasting the longitude - simply typing the digits corrupts the data.
The corruption kicks in at 2 decimal points and further typing is impossible. One has to type a digit, then delete the ca15 digits added, then type another digit then delete the ca15 digits added, then type another digit then etc. until you are finished. HIDEOUS. And now still operative 3 months later.
All data for longitude, no matter how they are inputted are apparently snapped to a grid at consequently get 15 significant digits even if only four are entered, thereby SCREWING UP THE LOCALITY RESOLUTION.
- does it with the default location
- does it with data from exif from pictures
- does it with copy pasting the data
- it totally messes up trying to type longitude
- I cannot test it with the “Use an existing locality” because that functionality has been lost.
Only clicking on the map seems immune to this, but the map has a bug of not recording the resolution and records everything to 15 decimal places even if the resolution is in fact 1000km!
The old site had this working! This is thus a bug, and one that the Open University vowed to honour as a condition of Southern Africa joining iSpot because they did not want to explicitly record locality resolution.
Please get this fixed!
Aparently they are working on your bug Tony and the fix may involve a slight modification of the data input page but I have not seen anything on this yet.
After speaking to the manager of the programmers he said that the OS bug was present on the old site as well. In which case it would be good to define just how bad it is and if it is having a significant effect onthe data. I suspect it may only affect observations where they are entered by putting in the OS grid reference. From memory I did a check of hundreds of the grid refs on the old site to check the site was putting the correct OS grid ref for the lat long values and those were correct. But what I have not done is entered data using OS grid refs to see if it is this part that is leading to data corruption and if it is then is it happening with every record or just some and how much corruption there is e.g. is it just a matter of lazy coding and not using the correct OS converter despite the fact that I told them exactly what they should be using.
Pardon me if I will only believe this when I see it …
then there will be only 550 more bugs to go …
I usually enter locations as ten digits OS grid references, and they’re at least mostly accurate.
If I have one or two obs to enter I use the map to find an approximate position. If there are several from one site, I use the map to find the first, then copy and paste the OS reference on that to find the general area, and reposition the pointer if necessary.
I am not having any problems with Location. For my project I am restricted to a 100m x 100m square but am posting to ten-, maybe one-metre accuracy.
I can type in a six fig ref, add one or two digits afterwards via an edit to precisely locate the sighting. I can type or copy in the 17 digit Lat/Long - it all works perfectly.
This is my 110m x 110m square. I have perfect control, via edit, over exact locations
In some ways I prefer to use the SatMap for the project because the iSpot map is not accurate. Placing a location on the Sat Image has always been the favourite for me - I have been doing it for years. I have just checked a few of my old locations, they have not moved.
…
The picture thief (a few minutes ago) has just been and stolen all 9 of my Project Description pix. I have just replaced them. I need to be more careful because I am editing the project description and the Observations regularly. we ALL need to be cautious during edits, specially Locations because it means you don’t look to see if images are present. Amen…
The picture thief.
We can confidently say that the picture thief never steals without it being obvious.
It is during the upload of the edit page that the pictures sometimes fail to load, and if you save those pictures are lost!
This should not be possible!!!
The pictures must exist and be re-linkable. it is reprehensible that the programmers are not responsible for fixing the errors caused by their bad programming.
I’m far from sure it was present on the old site (or if it was it was much less significant, perhaps only a few metres). On the current site if you type in an OS grid reference the entry is changed to a different grid reference, in around a decade of using this site I would have noticed that were it happening on the old one.