Guide pages confusion

I wanted to know why there were two pages dedicated to the same species, yet one page showed only eight images and the other was one of three pages of images.

If I interpret your answer correctly, one sees eight images (maybe it isn't always eight?) if (s)he browses to a species page, but then sees all the images if (s)he then clicks the Images tab on that browsed-to page.

Since this presumably isn't limited to the Eastern Comma from my example, I'll extrapolate and assume that for any species, just a few images are seen when the species page is browsed to, but all images are seen after clicking Images on that page.

For a newbie who first sees that browsed-to page, there is nothing I saw that indicated that this merely a few representative images. I also noticed on the browsed-to page, if I click below the eight images the link that says show images of both, I'll see eight images, but not necessarily the same eight.

http://bugguide.net/node/view/5509/bgpage

Yeah, that’s right. You did everything fine; you can’t be that confused.

The difference is function. “Browse” is like turning the pages of a field guide with phylogenetically/taxonomically arranged limited images. “Images” shows you all the images within & under a chosen taxa (and is where one adds one's images).

This is what may not be obvious: the images you see in Browse are either selected by an editor or they are not. If an editor has selected (or de-selected) the full complement of images (eight, when there are at least that many images) those are the ones you’ll see. Such images are known as “representative” and representative is the default setting for submissions. If more than eight images are locked-in as representative, then images are randomly shown from all available as the page renders. Clicking “refresh” shows a new set of images in that instance. (Some of this may have changed by now?)

There is actually a story behind your question. Here’s a list of discussions about representative images and navigating BugGuide that should illuminate this convoluted topic: http://bugguide.net/index.php?q=search&keys=representative&edit%5Btype%5D%5Bcomment%5D=on.

If you haven’t checked it out, here’s a page with a general orientation: http://bugguide.net/help/guide.

Just because this topic has been discussed before doesn't mean that things don't change and that all valad points of view have been expressed. Help is most welcome but have some trust. This is an expertly designed site that has been under fierce scrutiny (and improvement) for a few years. With entomology and computer science it gets complicated. Those tabs are there for reasons.

"Browsing to a page" can mean reaching the page by way of a series of other pages. That's general Webspeak. One tab at bugguide is labeled "Browse." This name has nothing to do with Web browsers. It means click here to browse among a few representative photos of the species in question. I think the photos are chosen randomly. If you refresh the page, you'll get a different set, perhaps with a few repeats from the first set. Repeats are more likely if the pool of photos of that species is small.

If you click the "Images" tab on the guide page ("Info") for the species (genus, family, etc.), you'll get all the photos of that species (genus, etc.).

The "Browse" tab is useful when there are a great many photos of the kind of animal you're looking for. This will happen for a large group, such as moths. "Browse" for moths has been organized to help viewers narrow down a search for photos that look like their new moth without looking at thousands of photos.

None of this is self-explanatory. I bumped around for a while until I found out what Browse and Info meant. The site is hard to navigate in other ways, too. You have to ask how to work its various parts.