Call to Editors

Yes, I would say move them to the Moths page. That's where I've been working, more so than ID Request.

And you're probably right about frassing. I've been gun-shy about frassing lately, even on some images that could be nothing more than frass. I'll try to step up and do some more frassing/cleanup.

Don't be gun shy, if the image needs to be frassed, do it, if someone complains, direct their attention to the top of the Frass page and let them connect the dots. I'm tired of living in fear of annoying emails and hurt feelings. If it's sub-par, overrepresented or too small I frass it. I've spent the last week cleaning out the beetles section, I've also finished the Cerambycids and I'm moving to Tenebs next.

Yeah, I'll get back to frassing more regularly. I'm going to try to hit that balance between gun-shy and trigger happy. :-)

This has probably been mentioned more than once before, but I wonder if it would be a good idea to put something about images being frassed in the opening paragraph of the ID Request page. It could state something along the lines of;

"While we hope to ID every image possible, some images will not have the quality necessary for positive ID or the quality to be representative images of the given species. In those circumstances, the image may be frassed. This is in no way an insult to the contributor, and we encourage continued submissions."

I don't know if that's the best way to say it, but if contributors understood the concept of frassing based on image quality from the very beginning, they are less likely to be shocked and/or offended when an image of theirs is frassed. Just a thought.

But I would rephrase this part:
"While we hope to ID every image possible, some images will not have the quality necessary for positive ID or the quality to be representative images of the given species. In those circumstances, the image may be frassed."
To something like this:
"We hope to ID every image possible. A reasonable time after IDying something it may be moved to Frass or, if the image is considered worth keeping in the guide it will be moved to the right page, either by the contributor or by an editor."
Of course this would entail for the IDer to add the comment: "move to guide page".
Would this work? Would it create more or less work? Would it be more or less confusing? Please, comment.

I have three comments:

1. I find J.D.'s wording clearer although it conveys less information.

2. This topic is already covered in the Images section of the Help tab. I just read through the Help tab and it is extremely helpful. I'm going to direct more new members to read it.

3. I think this thread should be moved to Web Site Problems and Suggestions.

You're right about the Help section, but I still feel it would be helpful to have a statement like above in the opening paragraph of ID Request. The reason being that it seems all too often people don't read through the help section first, but head straight for ID Request. And then after an image of theirs is frassed, they come to the forums asking about it, still not having read through the help section. I'm thinking such a statement in the opening paragraph of ID Request could "head 'em off at the pass" so to speak.

We could revise the statement a little to maybe say the following;

"While we hope to ID every image possible, some images will not have the quality necessary for positive ID or the quality to be representative images of the given species. In those circumstances, the image may be frassed by an editor after a reasonable time has passed for ID attempts. This is in no way an insult to the contributor, and we encourage continued submissions."

How's that sound?

And you're right about point # 3 - this thread probably would be better in that section.

Thanks for the input from both of you.

Let me ask you guys this.
Would it be better to put moths in "Moths" and beetles in "Beetles" etc etc rather than ID Request or does it matter ?
I'm always afraid they might not get as much attention for ID's if they're not in ID Request but maybe that's an incorrect assumption.
Some critters would have to be put in ID Request if we don't know what they are but most things could at least be put in the right Order.
Would this help?

It would be a lot better to put them in Beetles, Moths, etc, rather than in ID request. Any image placed in a higher taxon is in essence an ID request and it is easier for the specialists to find them there than to go through a hundred ID request pages.

Ok, I'll start putting my images at least in the correct order instead of ID Request. However, If I am completely unsure of what a critter is I'll still put it in ID Request.

I'll go move all of my images out of ID Request as soon as I can.

could use some serious help. If you have a favorite group of insects, beetles, butterflies, dragonflies, bugs, flies, spiders, walkingsticks, or mantids, whatever, go to that part of the guide and you will find hundreds of images that need to be identified or simply put away. And especially moth folk. We are in dire need of people to identify and put away (and even frass the unidentifiable ones) some of the thousands of moth images on the moth page and in ID Request. School starts tomorrow for John, so our involvement will be seriously curtailed, but we'll keep plugging away! Thanks to all

I've been plugging away pretty hard on the moth page in the last week. Oddly enough, I've moved dozens upon dozens of images, but it has hardly made a dent and they keep coming. It's like a lepidopterist version of an I Love Lucy episode. :-)

But seriously, I enjoy it so I'll put a larger percentage of time in the moth section than in ID Request.

Can't eat those Truffles fast enough huh? Thanks for all the hard work!!!

Sounds good, I'll work on the beetles heavily tomorrow

I went though the last 70 pages or so and placed all the beetles that are ID'd into their proper place, be it frass or in the guide. Did a bunch of Odonates too, I think I'll hit the flies next

Sounds like you're still talking about ID Request. We were talking about the guide. If you go to Coleoptera you will find 16 pages of not-yet-put-away beetles. If you go deeper you'll find 3 pages of Staphylinidae, 5 pages of Cerambycidae, 9 pages of Coccinellidae, 11 pages of Elateridae ...

Many of those cannot yet be identified beyond family, we would guess, so they are where they belong. But we also guess at least some of those 1000+ images mentioned above (plus more that are not mentioned) could be put into the guide by someone knowledgeable about and interested in beetles.

And we don't mean to imply that that's necessarily you. We all, as editors, have some responsibility to help. That's why we were suggesting people go "into the guide" to groups of insects they enjoy and see what they can do.

I've finished placing everything in the general undet Coleoptera that are ID'd to family away. Might clean up the Carabids next since I think Peter has gone through them and ID'd some stuff

I've been putting a lot of pictures in the carabid page, and just mailed all those specimens to Peter for species identification. He's got a few other projects going on at the same time, so it may take a month or so for him to identify all of them. Leaving them all in one place seems to be easier for Peter to find them once he tries to match up the specimen with the picture. Hope this doesn't mess up the guide too much, while they're getting identified.

I'd clean forgot about those, I'll start in on them next. I did do the Buprestids completely a while back, but I'll move on to something else!

I'll carry on the good fight till reinforcements arrive ;-)

Have a few hours of survey stuff that I was supposed to have entered by 8/1 but after that I can dig in a bit.

I'd think that anything that has at least a guess in it can go somewhere in the guide, hope that's a good chunk of the stuff.

If it's just a guess, it can be misleading. If you don't KNOW what species it is, don't guess at it. I've done this too much and have tried to stop suggesting further than genus level save on very very distinctive looking insects. So guesses to species should be placed in genus level. At least that's my opinion

That's pretty much what I meant. I did a pile of ones that I knew or were identified by Dr. Ascher, Dr. Buck, or Dr. Hamilton to start.

Same here, I did a lot of Dr. Ascher's

I am here but barely able to make a dent in the onslaught of summer images.

I have noticed many moth images on the last several pages in ID Request that will most likely not get identified and think they should be moved en masse. I am just not sure whether they need to go to Moths or Frass section...

moths into the guide to at least the base moth page. But recently Jerry moved tons of his back to ID Request (if you open them, you will see that many were already in the guide) and so we just gave up on moths. Sorry. You will notice that the last 15 to 20 pages have no flies, beetles, bugs, etc. We'll try to get back to that now that we're back from the Smokies. Great that you took care of those tons of Hymenoptera that were hanging on back there.

The Jerry thing is partly my fault. I had found several of his "Jerry-IDed" images on the wrong pages (of course) and I moved them up to where I knew they were better off. He told me that he didn't do his own IDs any more and that he only moved things where he was told, not overstepping his ID. I pointed out that he still had all of his old images hiding in the guide waiting for editors to find and fix and suggested he put them were they were really IDed (thinking of ones where he got a family ID and moved to subspecies!). Anyway I didn't know just how many he didn't have any ID on, and instead of moving to "Moths" he moved a bunch to "ID Request". Unfortunately so many belong in Frass, even many that do have IDs.

I'll let someone else make that call instead of me... As for my own stuff, I believe I've gotten most of the junk out but if you feel otherwise feel free to pitch. Most of the old specimen photos are pretty bad.

You have always been knee deep with your editor work and everyone including myself greatly appreciates the effort you go to!

Were it up to me most of the stuff back there would go to frass, as we have an unheard of number of undet moths already in the guide. However, as you might recall, people seem to get a little ... irritated when I frass things in large numbers ;-) (once again, my apologies for that whole mess). There are also large numbers of unidentifiable egss, galls and other unidentifiable things that I'd frass. I'd like a group consensus before doing something so rash.

I'm usually pretty good about responding to these sorts of things and then moving them if the contributor doesn't after a few days, but after being on the road for 40 days I got hopelessly behind. If editors who are going through the ID backlog (which I've been doing a fair share of too) move these bug 'sign' photos to the sections for unidentified eggs, galls, leaf mines, etc. (I had made a spider egg sac section too, but Jeff just deleted it for some reason), I'll be more likely to see them and deal with them.

As for things where it's not even clear in which category they belong, such as

my personal preference would be to create a "mystery objects" section where such things can be dumped in case someday someone figures out what they are. (I agree that some things are truly unidentifiable, but there are many things that are distinctive but just can't be identified by anyone who's looked at them so far.) If I'm the only one who thinks there would be any value in that, then it makes sense to frass them after they've been in ID Request for a while.

...But I guess I might as well go ahead and make that section now--it would be nice to see some new faces there at the end of ID Request. It'll be easy enough to delete if it offends anyone's sensibilities.

Here it is: http://bugguide.net/node/view/214125

We'll just have to remember to direct possible experts to those pages from time to time. The biggest problem with moving them to a special section is experts don't know those pages exist, so we have to direct them with specific comments from time to time.
As far as the spider egg page, we think Jeff moved most of those into the spider pages for the correct families, and with only one or two images left, there no longer seemed to be a need for the page. At least that was our interpretation of what happened.
Thanks

There should be an expiration date put on images in ID Request. If they aren't moved by the expiration date they automatically move to frass. In my opinion this would save a whole lot of work for you few who do all the work. You wouldn't have to physically move the images to frass anymore. And contributors (any, including editors) would have to take on more of the responsibility for their own images (the ones that get id'ed but not moved by others). And frassers wouldn't get hassled anymore. People could browse Frass to rescue worthwhile images that have dropped off. Just a thought.

an auto frass in ID request would really help sift out the stuff that really does not help the site, and it places at least an initial filter out of the hands of anyone, so there can be no complaining! I vote for it.

Not sure about the logistics. Hey, a good many people were at the gathering in the Smokies, so please cut them (us) some slack! Plus, I volunteer elsewhere and have a paying gig I'm trying to earn this week:-) Bottom line: no need to panic, Will.

wasn't criticism, just a request for reinforcements. I know everyone has other things to do. If we didn't I'd have already done the whole thing. I have school, many have work. I appreciate all the help the editors do, I'm just trying to expedite the resolution to the 'problem'. I also wanted some vague approval for the continued frassing of un-usable photos and those we have many of in the guide already, such as Ichneumonids or Moths.

If any of you guys want or need to frass any of my images please go ahead and do it. You will not get any flack from me about it. I'm through with all that nonsense and my childish outbursts. I apologize for anything I've done in the past to cause anyone to be leery of frassing and apologize for contributing to the false impression of "editors against contributors".
....just my two cents....