Wondering if this may resolve the dilemma of the albino squirrel @dejayM
Looking at yours and my mammal observations - we both have quite a few and I definitely have many that need agreements.
Would agreements to these increase my status? and then possibly validate the squirrel?
This Baboon observation has been corrected by Tony and has a tag that makes it easy to access - I could add tags to all my baboon obs - I have many so any agreements would not be incorrect.
Is it worth trying?
Just realised agreeing to this one will go to credit Tony - I shall need a more specific tag myBaboon
Adding for @Luisa Something special about Cape Point baboons
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Cape Town Stats
Urban Baboon Programme Annual Population Census2022/2023:
I think it should gently remain as an example of how infuriating Expert agreements can somtimes be.
I suspect my reputation will NOT explode when the banner eventually shifts as most agree-ers of ‘low’ reputation. It WOULD be nice to see the Albino in Other Observations.
As for Baboons, I believe they should all be together, so creating a third tag will split the collection. There are already two baboon(s) collection tags
Does an identification have to be a likely ID before its agreements contribute to ones reputation? I had though otherwise, i.e. if one expert agrees with you and two disagree you still get the points for the one expert agreeing with you.
Any added agreement, even to an invalid ID, counts towards your score. Nothing affects that point, unless you remove the agreement. A removed agreement leaves absolutely NO trace in your tracker and removes a point from your agreement score.
IF an Expert agrees with your ID then your score is fractionally enhanced.
I am full of admiration to those who devised that part of the site. Some of us have seen its occasional apparent failure but, generally, it is flawless.
iSpot has this Reputation on iSpot | Article | UK and Ireland | iSpot Nature
Note that it has been updated recently but is still a little incomplete
I’m not so sure. A plant expert in ZA is unlikely to be an expert in all southern African species. I definitely do not have enough expertise in British plants to warrant my status.
THEN
I’m struggling a bit with the insidious changes we are experiencing - I keep wishing for the Good old Bad old days. Maybe we need some feedback about the changes - explaining WHY suddenly we no longer have the ‘date taken’ filled in automatically ( I used it to check that I had the correct date).
Now the auto-filled location has got me really rattled - what logic is there when attempting to locate an observation in RSA I have a location in Limehouse, London filled in. It’s all so time consuming. Any thoughts om how I can turn these off @miked?
Miss the members logged on - lost a while ago.
I hated that because my onboard clock was sometimes wrong and I sometimes wanted to use old photos for new observations
Anyway the system still works in part and relies on your own cameras EXIF data. And so the stored Location in your photos is copied over.
You can run your photos through most of Photo apps and REMOVE location (and date) if you wish (Change or delete properties)
You can right click on your photo to view properties - NOT all Applications allow changes.
It is worth reminding you that Google knows where your PC is and will get it wrong when you add a ZA photo. You need to tell Google to ignore your Home Location - the Web has good advice.
I guess my old cameras, which I still use, never had location - I used a Garmin, which was quite inaccurate where signals were blocked or on the mountains - sounds like this is more for modern, smart-phone cameras. Even my computer is aging, like the owner.
But this is something that has cropped up very recently.
I’ll just need to learn to live with it - but it slows me down and I still have so many ZA observations to share.
So you are saying that the date of the observation used to be filled in from the exif of the photo but now is not? Do you remember when that change happened as I don’t think we should have modified the bit of code that picks that information up for at least a year, possibly several years.
This information can be stripped out ‘accidentially’ if you edit the image with any software before upload to ispot or if you use one of the newer file formats such as HEIC which may be the default file format on iphone and can be switched on in recent android phones.
No Mike my cameras never contained a location. iSpot ZA community, until very recently. always displayed a map of Africa. Now it seems that it must be taking the location (which is still incorrect) from the computer log-in. So now I’m getting auto-filled locations from London, sometimes from across the Thames or near Limehouse. It must be something to do with locations of shots from smart phones.
I’m not the only one this observation Mystery Rodent size of a Gerbil | Observation | UK and Ireland | iSpot Nature
Eventually corrected was meant to be from the Isle of Dogs but ended up in Epping Forest. Took some manipulating to get the correct location.
Then I’m wondering if this may be happening a lot and not being noticed?
With some of my observations from the West Coast I’d use a previous location then tweaked it - bur found that this wasn’t working - so I’m not sure how many of my recent posts are incorrectly located. A plant located in the saline marsh is very different from one just a few meters away on the dry slope above the road.
Then the other thing I really miss is the auto-fill of the ‘date taken’ - my visits to Cape Point for example - I frequently work on more than one date at a time and dates like 08/09/2008 and something similar very often occur. Then the software I use also has aberrations - especially after moving to a new computer. I’m getting used to this, but do miss the old days :o(
Oh, it’s irrelevant really. We can manually enter the ‘date taken’ in Observations and override EXIF Data and we can erase MOST of the photo properties in our Folders. The worry might be IF the iSpot data carries the EXIF entries, the manually added dates might get overridden in the future.
I think my only point was to do with showing the same habitat or organism over the years and IF the Observation date is LOCKED to the first, or any photo-, date then the observation might be flawed, To be honest, I don’t feel it’s an issue
If you post the same species twice, do you get credited for the second observation, I wonder.
There are comparatively few five-icon birders, so it takes a long time to get to that point yourself. But, once you do, you can then ‘speed up’ others in their quest for bird icons. With invetebrates there are plenty of five-iconers!
i love doing that and would not mind becoming a Brown Hare specialist…
But honestly, don’t wonder Ken, we need to see the same species in different seasons and circumstances.
What MIGHT be reasonable is to make the ‘agreements score’ to a maximum (never to be exceeded) plenty of users are expressing their Like by adding an agreement - we LIKE red Robins, we hate red Seaweeds
I would hope that users are expressing their Agreement by adding an agreement.
However, a rule of having to express why you agree would reduce activity on the site, and would make it harder for new arrivals to garner reputation. And explaining why you agree with an obvious (lawn) daisy or robin would be adding clutter to the site.
