Searching "tagged" Identifier Line

Searching using Identifiers

Just an added note to this old post... now that Bugguide has grown considerably, it's best to create an identifier like this one

lks-moth (that's initials of contributor and type of specimen).

The reason for this is that the search engine can no longer handle certain words like "moth" and "beetle". Searching those words "crashes" the search engine. Adding the hyphen between your name and the specimen type (with no spaces) should solve this problem.

… Lynette Elliott, 4 December, 2010 - 4:22pm

Lynette,

You first suggested I add identifier line, back when I only had 200 posts. With 3400+, I'm glad I did :) Thanks, again.
Crazy Bob

… Robert Lord Zimlich, 5 December, 2010 - 12:07pm

Some data points

I've noticed the blank page with some searches, but being new to BugGuide I didn't know if it was a bug or a feature. The page generated is completely blank, no HTML emitted at all. I went back over some of my recent searches, but couldn't find a specific pattern, other that "moth" is bad. Here are some searches that break for me:

wood beetle
tiny wood beetle
tiny beetle
moth beetle mimic
milkweed beetle
hummingbird Moth
green striped fly
Bug Guide 2.0

Here are some searches that work fine:

tiger fly
fly larva parasite
rove beetle
beetle ovipositor
beetle mimic
fly larva
japanese beetle
june bug
green lynx
BugGuide 2.0

Don't know if that helps at all or not.

… G.K. Gerber, 16 August, 2010 - 12:28am

Not sure about a solution

It looks like the query is searching for each of the terms before filtering out the results that don't have all of them. This would be a problem for any search: I just tried "onustana", and got 4 hits, then tried "onustana moth" and maxed out the search. It might very well be built into the architecture of the query language.

Maybe Mike Boone could be persuaded to add the identifier field to the advanced search so you can search on taxon=60 rather than putting the word "beetle" in there.

… Chuck Entz, 15 August, 2010 - 11:35pm

Moth Solution

I tried searching 'zimlich' + 'Hodges' and it showed images of all 858 ID'd moths. This is actually better, because I can search 'zimlich' + 'noid' to find anything not yet ID'd.

Of course, this doesn't help with my beetles.

… Robert Lord Zimlich, 16 August, 2010 - 7:41am

Yes, frustrating

I had no idea we'd accumulate so many images we'd break the search engine with the most common terms like beetle & moth. If I were to go back in time I'd change my identifiers to lks_moth (no space). If we could get bugguide to return thumbnails instead of links with the advanced search that would solve all my searching problems. Perhaps google can do some of the work for you? See here.

… Lynette Elliott, 22 August, 2010 - 8:38am

google

I tried that with a different search and got other websites. To search bugguide that way, it needs to be:

site:bugguide.net instead of
, bugguide

Certainly much easier than using the bg advanced search and clicking on each to see the image (but I tried with my name, and it was missing 30-something compared to the bg search).

… Debbi Brusco, 25 August, 2010 - 7:12pm

Advanced search

You can search your own images on a taxon when using the advanced search.

1. Put your contributor number in the "User ID #" field.

2. Type "beetles" or whatever in the "Taxon ID #" field. Options will appear. Select the one you want.

3. Fill out the rest of the form, skipping items you don't need, and click "Go."

If you're looking for a particular image and using "moth" this way surpasses the system's capacity, maybe using "Geometridae" or "Tortricidae" won't.

… R. Berg, 16 August, 2010 - 12:04am

You can, but...

you can't access the identifier field- the "zimlich a1" part, for instance. That's what needs to be added.

… Chuck Entz, 16 August, 2010 - 7:21am

Search problems

For what little it is worth... your name and "spiders" also does fine (beyond a few odd results) but as you say, "moths" seems to break the system. The same happens when using your user ID # instead of your name (in Advanced Search). It appears that the volume of "moths" in the system has passed some limit (that JvD is not subject to.) I too have noticed similar problems when using a "too common" search term and the problem has appeared somewhat recently in the Forums. I can often work around that limit problem since I am free to narrow my searches with alternate words - you unfortunately, are likely limited to the tags you have used for your type of search.

… Roy Sigafus, 15 August, 2010 - 10:54pm