What to do when a species has been split with previous sightings?

Gestart door bas.van.schooten, december 06, 2016, 18:29:50 PM

Vorige topic - Volgende topic

bas.van.schooten

Dear all,

I personally find it very annoying that people email me that my indian spotted creeper in ethiopia was a african spotted creeper.

My suggestion would be that a moderator would change the species in obvious cases (only one species was every recorded in that country) and just sends a message to the observer that they changed it and welcome any feedback if there are questions.
This makes it more efficient for administrators as well.

Even better would be if when splits are being updated that based on the distribution most species get renamed through a script. At least in countries where only one species occurs after the split.

This will safe me plenty of emails if i can please change the trogon or spotted creeper to the right species.... I find it the least exiting thing to do on observado or in my live.

Maybe there is already a policy and I am just ignorant but I though I just bring it up




caliprobola

Annoying that someone finds it annoying to manage his own data...
I think Bas is applying for a job as moderator...

bas.van.schooten

I moderate for USA. I reassigned all the sooty grouse to dusky grouse where ranges didnt overlap. Left the people a message for why and huppa cleaned up a case.
I just find it weird to get several emails begging me to chance a obvious problem with a obvious solution. splits that have occurred after the sighting has been reported.

I just want to be more efficient because I already hate correcting after I got an email that i misidentified something (which is not true with splits the administration just assigned only one species. Violaciues trogon and spotted creepers being good examples.
I never claimed an indian spotted creeper in ethiopia i claimed a spotted creeper. species got split in an update. for the sack of the update it was easier to assign everything to one species. Thats all fine. I am just advocating what is the best for cleaning up the errors after the decision. Asking people to change an error they didn't produce seems like a very inefficient strategy. Double-checking on changes can take months doing it as an administrator (it is possible i do it) is much faster and more complete. I don't think that there would be anybody protesting. Most people just appreciate that you do it for them is my experience.
But if it would be something we could do more efficient with a script than that would save people time to go do more fun things.

caliprobola

As a butterfly validator I know the problem (been giving numerous remarks to Aricia agestis sightings in Spain earlier this week, where only the split off Aricia cramera lives).
I guess however that (1) in most cases of splits it only concerns a handful of sightings and (2) there is a short-circuit between the taxonomy specialists and software specialists. This makes that taxonomy specialists just quickly give some remarks to observations without incorporating the software specialists as this is in many cases the quickest solution on a short term.
Anyhow, I would be happy if someone puts my attention to a split in my observations that I missed in some way...

HJDT

I agree with Bas, if only one species of a fresh split species occurs in the location of the sighting it would be best if the correction is made batch wise by the moderators. Shure it would be even better if this could be done using some kind of script to save them time.

For me the problem is that I'm not working with the latest IOC updated list (the current version I'm using for my personal list on my PC is 3.4 I believe) and I don't have time to keep up with every update that is produced. Therefore I'm strugling to keep up with all splits and wether or not I should incorporate them in my list. I'm sure there are some species I should have to change but I simply don't have the time to dig into that and make the applicable corrections on both Observado and in my Excel file.

Grtzs Michel
Heb je echt niks beters te doen?? Kijk dan eens op onze nieuwe site in aanbouw: www.feathertail.com

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

hiskodevries

an automatic split is only used if the required query is possible, for example by country borders. A lot of splits are done with this , but its not always possible.
Was getekend Hisko de Vries.

Wil je een fotovraag stellen op het forum lees dan dit eerst https://forum.waarneming.nl/smf/index.php?topic=452369.0