PROJECTS ONLY PLEASE
We know there is a disaster with our old projects - little thought was given to them in the Recode - many are ruined.
Please don’t go on about how your project was ruined in June but by all means, ask how you might rescue parts of it.
This Thread then is for Constructive Ideas for and discussion about Projects.
For me (this will get me into trouble) I’d like to suggest that published projects should be of potential interest to everyone, so not just private collections of your own Observations♥ (say) - THAT can be accomplished via a Private set of filters,
I’d like proper space for text as well as Project Illustrations (not just a gallery) - a space which isn’t locked by a reply, so a dynamic space that I can edit frequently to add new items of interest and relevance.
I’d like people to OPT to get notifications from Projects as opposed to endless notifications every time a word is added - When Changes are restored.
I think, inevitably, that perhaps Projects should be kept in their own Communities EXCEPT when publishing them in Global, for everyone to enjoy or paricipate…
I reserve my right to love this https://www.ispotnature.org/communities/southern-africa/view/project/734200/nicky-vb-her-lichen-finds
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Yeah I had to rework some of my projects, I ended up just coping the links to the search query instead of to the taxonomy link.
https://www.ispotnature.org/communities/southern-africa/view/project/599708/
https://www.ispotnature.org/communities/southern-africa/view/project/614766
These projects of mine do not really benefit from having a gallery of observations. However, they would benefit from some sort of summary statistics-how many observations of which species, who has contributed the most and total number of species/observations. Something that should be easy to automate on the summary page for the programmers. Maybe they could even be made to toggle on/off when the project is created-if the creator thinks it adds to the project summary page.
I have never set up a project but I occasonally get asked to add my observations to a project. Shouldn’t the originator of a project be able to gather other people’s observations in to their project rather than have to ask the person who posted the observation to do it?
yes, using normal Taxonomy or perhaps existing Tags, this is the way. I guess if one is making a Project based on a Person’s Observations, like in my example above 
, then permission should be sought. I use ‘unique’ (by invitation) tags in some of my projects - you were requested to add my personal tag MarineA1. Your observation appears in my Seaweed’s Project Gallery, though that is being revised as we ‘speak’. Personally I am against the idea of being able to add Tags to other’s Obs. but it has been suggested.
“We have also asked that users with projects could add tags to observations”. @Tony_Rebelo
Think Project Boundary - NO filters. Collects every observation inside your Polygon.
https://www.ispotnature.org/communities/southern-africa/view/project/302043/life-on-the-cape-peninsula
Benefits from Screen tips - what you write beside your Observation Pictures, when loading them, a smart Description "Herein we celebrate the biodiversity of one of the Wonders of Earth" and a good demanding Cover Picture (absent in this case). This form of Project is the most easy to produce and automatically updates as new Observations, within its boundary, are added to iSpot.
Projects have never been easier to produce than now
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DELETE A PROJECT
Does anyone Know how to Delete a project? I have three completely ruined ones that need shredding.
If you go to Your iSpot and select the Projects tab, the table of projects has a right hand column with preview, edit and delete operations. So, provided the delete operation works …
It did, of course. Goodbye to two trashed Projects, one with 800 visits.
Thanks
I could see the ability of other people adding tags having some small benefits. If it were added I would think it is important to be able to distinguish between the tags created by the items creator and those added on by others.
Might also be worth having a feature to allow the original poster to reject the inclusion of a tag on their post if they felt that unnecessary.
For instance someone was creating a collection of images of migrant lepidoptera and asked me to tag one of my images with migrant moth. I refused on the grounds it was not possible to be sure it was a migrant and not an expansion of the local population. Had they just been able to add the tag themselves I would have been concerned to have a misleading label associated with my entry so having it either quarantined as clearly not created by me or having the ability to remove it would seem useful.
…maybe. Much might depend on how well Changes works and how well people respond to requests (or if at all). I see it as only a very last resort and only if it’s necessary. Perhaps, then, it should be done only by request to a Curator.
Personally I would not want someone add a tag to any of my posts but, if I am unable or have left the arena, I would be happy for an official to do it…
Its all fine and good if the users are active-but often the observers are long gone. So the full value of the observation will be lost if it contains useful information that cannot be sorted using tags. Here it would be useful to enable anyone to add a tag.
But then there is the policing issue-what if people add rubbish tags, or spam. One could request a dedicated admin, but is this a permanent solution? I would recommend that a list of acceptable tags be drawn up to be added to another person’s observation (people can request new tags). Then also allow ‘crowd’ tags to be removed by the observer if they think it is wrong. Obviously tracking changes to tags would be necessary.
Anyway, more of a philosophical debate at this point…
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Yes, I’m mellowing o’er this. When I’m ‘gone’ and you have exhausted the usual routes, add a tag to my Observation, please.
Why did you delete them? Why did you not just edit them? You wasted 800 visits and what about lost comments and information associated with the projects?
Please dont!!
The easiest way around this is to only allow a user to add a tag to an observation if they have a project with that tag.
This does mean that if someone else sees a useful observation (e.g. a road kill) they could not add the tag Roadkill but would have to either alert the observer or the project holder to the observation.
Interesting! You are quite happy for anyone to post comments and replies to your observation.
And yet you dont want tags.
Why the difference? (and how does this difference apply when you are gone?)
Now if tags are working properly (a super-hypothetical situation) then.
- Anyone can add a tag if they have the authority (and here I would suggest that they need a project using that tag to have the authority, or have posted more than 100 observations - or some such restriction: not everyone).
- The observer will be informed of any tags placed on the observation, and can review them (and remove them if they want, or correct them if they are faulty (e.g. a wrong tag or missspelled tag))
- The administrator/curator can on request remove tags, and entirely delete a tag (e.g. a socially, sexually or politically inappropriate tag), which would make all instances of it on iSpot vanish. - this was possible on the old iSpot.
- The administrator could edit, join, split tags. For instance make the tags “alien”, “Alien”, “Aliens” (three different tags) into one tag - e.g. “Alien” (this functionality did not exist on the old site: making them all the same name merely created 3 different tags with the same name, of which only one - the first created - was detected by the filter)
Would this be more acceptable to you? (even when you have moved on?)
Put simply - YES (to the Bullets •) .
This is a discussion area though; one would hope that some form of proper consultation would be a prelude to ANY changes in the way iSpot moves forward. Goodness I do hope the _Powerful One_s are reading some of this.
You know there is a difference between adding a Comment and a Tag. If a comment is undesirable (I’ve seen them) one can have it removed immediately (with a click) though it may be reinstated. You may wish to add the Tag Rubbish to my post and I have no control over that.
But, as I wrote, I am mellowing o’er this, so if I have the right and method to block or remove other’s tags (in my posts) then fine. But I can work with anything here - I’m doing that at the mo.
[quote=“Tony_Rebelo, post:14, topic:253, full:true”]
Why did you delete them? Why did you not just edit them? [/quote]
Scuse me… - have you seen my ex-delightful href-based Marine Fish Project?
We are working to get comments editable again.
We need a REAL solution to our problems not silly workarounds.
Ridiculous ideas by programmers:
Stupid idea: restrict number of pictures to 10 per observation
Silly workaround: spread the pictures over several observations
Stupid idea: stop editing on comments
Silly workaround: move comments to description.
Stupid idea: long, meaningless and unfathomable urls
Silly workaround: use the old iSpot urls which are meaningful and let the new site remap them
Stupid idea: no search on the dictionary and browser pages
Silly workaround: use the old iSpot urls which are meaningful and simple to use and let the new site remap them
Stupid idea: stupid little windows in the gallery view
Silly workaround: use the list view instead (at much inconvenience
Stupid idea: limit the map view to 1000 observations
Silly workaround: press the more button 10, 20 or 45 times until all the observations show. How the hell else do you know how many observations there are in your project?
Thank heavens the old site was so good and had so many brilliant designs that it is still usable on this hacked-up site.
But there are some stupid ideas that the programmers have had that are unfathomable and unsolvable.
like not having changes and track, and dropping our old forums.
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As far as I know from brief scans, my Projects (southern African) are all intact. But I have noticed that certain ‘protected’ species posted have not been added. I’m talking Crowned Crane and Blue Duiker, yet Pickersgill’s Reedfrog (until recently Critically Endangered) sits there proudly. Is this a new thing? Is this because the Project Area is too small to incorporate the 100 km2 ‘mystery cube’ designed to hide the specific specimen locality? Does this not partially defeat the purpose of Projects?