Frassing

I have specimens to send in that I took pictures of. So how do I send the images and where/how do I send the???

Definition of frass/frassed/frassing
I didn't really care that the photos I sent in were "frassed". I only wanted to identify the caterpillar my son found on my hat.
I was curious what the definition of "frass/frassed/frassing was, and first looked it up in merriam webster online, which gave me the definition of: "debris or excrement produced by insects"...
Also, Wikipedia has a definition: "the fine powdery material phytophagous (plant-eating) insects pass as waste after digesting plant parts."..
But I thought the Urban Dictionary definition was hilarious, and posted it without regard to the sensitivities of editors...

I've unpublished Marwil's comment. BugGuide is a family-friendly site.

Perhaps an article on how to avoid frassing could include some of the tips buried here. I run into this comment by chance and I think that some of the suggestions should be easier to find. Please, check it out; you have to scroll down.

Do we ask John VanDyk to write up some guidelines, ask someone here to do it, or wait for a volunteer? Start it as an article and then people can leave constructive suggestions? Then email the guidelines to new editors as they sign up?

How about when you have an image in ID request, but you know an ID will be impossible, yet the picture shows an interesting phenomenon, such as parasitism...
I am asking this now because I have no idea what to do with this: http://bugguide.net/node/view/128668/bgimage

One of the reasons I have not gone over to honey bees, or multicolored Asian lady beetles, and frassed like crazy, is because it is too much work to evaluate data points to determine which images can be frassed without eliminating a state, a date, or whatever. I don't even know if I could find the map function, for example, though I'm pretty sure it must be an offshoot of the "info" tab....Until it becomes less work to filter out redundant images in cases like this, I don't plan to take that on, and I'm sure I probably speak for other editors, too.

I guess I see Bugguide as slowly becomming better with age, as better images are posted, Id's cleared up, etc. So as this progression continues, standards tend to change. (honey bee discussion below) the first few images were a valuable addition, no matter what the quality the following million not so much.

I think that contributors need to realize that, and that the frassing of their image could mean several things, poor quality, multiples not needed, or simply unidentifiable shot for some reason. I think it is more important in the long haul for Bugguide to become more streamlined and accurate then to be bogged down by useless or redundant information. If an editor/specialist frasses your image, hard cheese. Most likely its for a reason. I agree that should be stated by the editor during the frass, and with no hard feelings the contributor should take that bit of information into consideration during subsequent attempts. I certainly expected I had to prove myself competent in the groups I work in before I requested to become an editor, and I do not frass anything outside of my expertise.

So contributors should expect frassing from time to time. I have posted images simply for ID confirmation, and have no issues junking them if they do not add anything helpful. Contributors need to understand that sometimes their images are helpful to have in the site, sometimes they are not. Unless an editor is just being a pain towards someone, which other editors would probably catch, I say live with it.

I would like to see one complete page showing all editors within respective areas of expertise, this way we could see what the level of frass watchdog is for particular orders/families.

In the absence of guidelines we desperately need to express our views in order to reach some consensus, especially those editors that practice frassing in a large scale should explain their criteria for doing so. There are definitely several unexplained different criteria and we need to discuss them. If somebody is an expert that is the more reason to explain how they proceed, only then it may be left to their discretion.
We agree in a few things, such as, very poor, unidentifiable images or repetitive images can be frassed. In those instances an explanation may not be absolutely necessary, but I still feel that it is important. So what if it is time consuming? So, you frass fifty rather than a hundred images, no big loss. It is a lot worse creating confusion or ill feelings among the contributors. Not knowing what to do, they may keep on submitting undesirable images or give up altogether. Either way it is a loss to Bugguide.
We also seem to agree that an image should never, ever, be sent directly from ID request to frass without an explanation. In fact, so far most of us have had a tacit agreement to do at least a stab at IDing it, even if it is no more than: "Sorry, but the best I can do is say that this is a bee (or a fly)". After that the image stays put for some unspecified length of time before being sent to Frass, allowing the poster to see the answer.
We need guidelines or at least a more thorough discussion of this thorny issue, not only to alleviate the ill feeling that some contributors feel, but also to give the editors a little more confidence on how to act. I have had contributors balking at having a honey bee sent to Frass, never mind that there are beekeepers in every state of the Union and that there are honey bees in every state and every month! Who needs another data point! I would love to reduce the pages of honey bees to half or even less, but don't dare to do it. There are a few other over-represented groups that need cleaning but some contributors defend their images ferociously.

Frassing to clean up (other than very poor images) should be left to the discretion of the experts in that area. Keeping in mind that...the auto frass comment or frass page may need to be changed to include instructions on moving an image back to the guide.

I wasn't going to get into the "fight" in the other topic because I seem to have a knack for pissing everybody off but I think I'll comment here (respectfully).

From a contributors standpoint it would be nice if we could get explanations of why things are frassed. But, most of the time I can figure out why but still it would be nice. When I first became a BugGuide member it was very frustrating for me when something of mine would get frassed. Looking back now though it's a wonder all of my pics didn't get frassed just because of the low quality. The quality aspect was hard for me to see back then because I thought I was doing ok.
However, these days I frass more of my own pics than anyone once I have an ID. Or, sometimes I'll frass a critter if it sits in ID Request for an extended period of time because I figure either it's not a good enough pic or people don't know what it is....I've only done that a couple of times. There have even been a couple of times people asked why I frassed an image and wanted to put it back in ID Request.
What I've learned, and am still learning, is that pride really has no place at BugGuide. It's ok to be proud of your pictures but people shouldn't get upset if it gets frassed. I have had several critters frassed recently that I had put into the guide. I assume it was because they were fairly common species and the pics weren't bad but could have been better. I still get frustrated sometimes about frassing but I'm usually not going to question it. It just makes me want to take better pics....then I can say HA! let's see you frass that! I try to think of it as a challenge. At some point my pics will get good enough that few will be frassed....I hope. However, the pride thing is hard to get over for people in general. I don't like to frass my own pics but in the end it's what's best for BugGuide because BugGuide is not Flickr and is not a storage facility for peoples pics. I still have issues with my own pride but I'm trying to do better.