Search Function

It worked for you.

Were you searching Toxomerus occidentalis, California State, Santa Cruz Co?

If you paste that url into your browser we would think you would get taken to our search. From the url and/or from the search page you should be able to see that we searched on species number 60281 in California, Santa Cruz, Co. Is that what you are asking? Is that not visible to you from the search results page? We're not sure what you are asking, sorry.

Maybe if you have a single specific question that you would like answered by search, you can tell us what that is and then we can give you specific directions on how to get the answer you seek. Maybe that might help?

Yes, I pasted that URL.

I see you got the results I wanted, but haven't been able to get.

What was your search criteria that made this work where all of my SC Co searches are never complete? How does one get the Advanced search to give you this?

Scott

the results page. Is it really not there? That would be strange.

Here are the steps we followed.
1) We went to the Toxomerus occidentalis page here
2) We looked in the url that is in our web browser when we are there and see that Toxomerus occidentalis is species number 60281. You should be able to see that number in the url for Toxomerus occidentalis.
3) We clicked on the Search button with nothing in the request and were taken to the opportunity to do an Advanced Search and clicked on that.
4) In Taxon ID# we typed 60281
5) We clicked on California
6) We typed in Santa Cruz
7) We clicked on Go and got the results you see

We're afraid we're still missing something in what you're asking because we feel we keep saying the same thing which is probably not helpful to you. Sorry. But don't give up on us. We'll figure out what you are asking eventually. :)

EDIT: We just checked on one more thing. You can start typing Toxomerus occid... into the Taxon ID # field in the Advanced Search and it will find the species number for you -- 60281.

I didn't find that the Taxon ID was filled in for me when entering Toxomerus occid... but I now see what you did to get all of that species to show up.

I know universities use Mac's, I've no idea how they operate, but with us windows users, you enter something in the search, and expect that to cover all the results, I'd never heard of going to the search, finding the species name, then getting the taxon name, and then entering that. It at least explains why I've never got the Search or advanced search to do much of what I wanted.

Is there a trick to find all of the insect posts for Santa Cruz County?

Now, to make my submissions show up in a search, just using the search box, do I need to go back to each page and copy the folder name, then click on edit, and then put that in the notes? It isn't clear to me if the guide adds the name, where else it needs to be so that the search function can find it too.

One other query, is it possible to get notifications when another user posts? I have one fella 10-15 miles south of me that posts a lot, his stuff never comes up in the searches for the same reason mine don't, and it would be educational for me to know what he is finding too.

The search works the same way on Macs and on PCs.

To see what the guy 15 miles south posted recently, you can click his name and then the link to his images, as was suggested. Another way is to get his user number from the URL for his user page and enter that number in the uppermost box in Advanced Search.

In another post, you said you don't know how to make a link to a photo. This was one of your URLs: http://bugguide.net/node/view/599747/bgimage. To put a thumbnail photo in a comment or a post, take just the number, 599747, and type it in brackets after the word "thumb" and a colon, like this:

[%thumb:%599747%]

but without the % signs I added so the software wouldn't put a photo there.

Here's the result of typing that without the % signs:

First of all, the advanced search treats the different categories on the search form as filters: in effect you're telling it "don't give me anything that doesn't match this." That means you can add the county="Santa Cruz" to any of the other search terms to eliminate everything that doesn't have "Santa Cruz" in the county field.

If you put a number in the user ID field, it will eliminate everything that wasn't posted by the user who has that user ID (If you hover over the byline link on a comment or an image, you'll see an address that ends with the user ID- using yours as an example: "http://bugguide.net/user/view/42663" ends with 42663, which is you user number).

When you put a taxon ID in, though, it only eliminates what's outside the taxon you're searching, rather than just the ones that don't match. If you search the Class Insecta (taxon ID 52), it won't exclude any of the orders, families, genera, species, etc. that are insects, instead of just allowing the ones posted to the Class Insecta itself.

That means putting 52 in the taxon id field, "Santa Cruz" in the county field, and 42663 in the user id field will eliminate everything that's not an insect and everything that doesn't have "Santa Cruz" in the county field, and everything not posted by you.

As for notification, BugGuide apparently only notifies if a comment is posted to something you're subscribed to, and you can't subscribe to a user.

There might be a way to achieve a similar result by using one of the third-party websites that monitor a specific web address for you, but I would recommend against it: it would have to perform an advanced search every time it checked for changes, and that would add more load to the already-busy servers at BugGuide. Better to just do the advanced search yourself when you want to know.

What you can do is bookmark the results page you get after you click "search" or "go" on a search. Every time you select that it will run the query again rather than giving you the old results like your browsers "back" button would do. Or in Windows you can send it to your desktop as a shortcut. Either way it will save you a little typing and/or clicking

to do exactly these things you are asking. Macs has nothing to do with Search. Search is like a Google Search. If you type something into Search you will get anything that it can find on BugGuide that has the words you searched on. When you type Toxomerus occidentalis into Search it returns all the images, guide pages, comments, etc. that have those words on them, exactly what you asked it to do. It does not return all the images of Toxomerus occidentalis, because not all the images have those words on them. As we said earlier, you can see those words when you open the image because the BugGuide software attaches the species name to the page when it is opened, but the words are not actually on the page. To test this, move an image from a species page back to ID Request and the words will disappear. They are not part of the image node.

The same thing happens in Google. Type in something and Google will return what it thinks you most might like to see. It will not return everything about Toxomerus occidentalis either and it will give you weird things that seem to have nothing to do with it. That's how searches work. We have all learned to live with that.

If you want to use Advanced Search, then you have to use it in the way it was designed. You need to fill in the fields with the required information. If you go right back to typing Toxomerus occidentalis as a phrase to search on, you will get back exactly what you had when you did the regular search. You are asking it to find things that have those exact words on them and you will not get all the images of Toxomerus because the images don't contain those words unless specifically added to the Title or Remarks. If you want to get all the images of Toxomerus occidentalis you need to enter the species number into the Taxon ID # field. Now it is not searching for the words "Toxomerus occidentalis", it is searching for images linked to that species page.

There is no "trick" to finding all of the insect posts for Santa Cruz Co. Just Click on Search without entering anything. Click on Advanced Search. Click on California. Type in Santa Cruz, and hit Go. We just did it and got 2,264 results, all the posts from Santa Cruz Co.

If you want to be able to find your images with Search instead of Advanced Search then you will have to enter the scientific name, Genus and species, on every one of your images in the Remarks section. Once again, the guide does not add the name to the image node. It only adds it to the screen view when you open it. That's why when your images are moved around, the name you see changes instantaneously without anyone having to type anything.

But we can't imagine why you would want to do that when Advanced search finds anything you want in an instant. We typed in your contributor number, 42663, into the User ID # field and got 1534 results in seconds. We decided to see your Syrphid images and typed Syrphidae into the Taxon ID # field and it asked if we wanted 196 Syrphidae. We said yes by clicking on it and then Go and it found all 136 of your syrphid images in a fraction of a second.

Yes, you need to type the right information into the right field to get Advanced Search to work, but there really isn't anything unusual about that. Computers expect that all the time.

We're not sure if you can automatically subscribe to another user so that you are informed when he posts something. One of the other BugGuide users will have to answer that one for you. But you can see what he posts whenever you like. For example, if we click on your name under any of your images or comments, we are taken to your contributor page. On the bottom of the page it says "1534 images were submitted by this contributor". If we click on that, we see your last twelve posts and we can scroll back through your images, just as you do. You can do the same with the contributor who lives just south of you. Once a week, visit his contributor page. Click on his images and see what he has posted since last you looked. It couldn't be more simple.

But again, his stuff will show up in the searches if you use Advanced Search correctly. Just don't expect him to go through all his images and add the scientific name so that you can find them in Search instead of using Advanced Search. Advanced Search will get you whatever you like, but you will need to practice with it to get a feel how it works. Once you know that, you will be unstoppable!

You very much for your good, and patient explanations.

I don't suppose there is any page that gives the directions for an advanced search when someone wants to see all of the images of say, a Drone Fly. I didn't find one, or a page about this when I started asking earlier.

Something that explains the advanced search, would have been an asset in me bugging several of you till I understood why the search doesn't do what I'd think it would do, and how to make it do what you want.

mean Eristalinae, go to that page and click on "Images". You will see all the images by scrolling through the pages, all 200 of them. See here. Or you can just see the 100 pages of Eristalini here

And it took a fraction of a second to find all 41 images of Eristalinae from Santa Cruz Co, CA, using Advanced Search

Copy the link, then look at the resulting page, you will see what is filled in each field of the query form.

Finding my own images isn't the problem as I scroll through the 100+ pages I have posted as it gives the same result as an advanced search with my ID number.

As long and painful as that may be, the repetition at least lets me learn a little more, though using a search feature would be really helpful.

A list of all insects for my Country, would be of great benefit, but I can't find them, much less with any certainty, mine, in the search or advanced search....

Pointing out it is my images that I'm not finding was easier then locating examples of others images when I wanted to see records for my county.

So is there anything I can do, to get BugGuide software images to show in a search or all of these simply lost to the Advanced search engine?

Thanks for your attention to this.
Scott

My problem lies in not being able to find submissions for my County. I knew by looking through every photo in once instance, that there were three of us that had a species filed under it's name.

Putting the species name into the search, then to the advanced search and putting it into the Phrase in description, checking California and filling in my county, Santa Cruz, I may not get any, or only a few of those.

Here is another example I put in another thread, as I needed this information to deal with the data points I was asked to check with on my submissions.

Just as an example, I did 7 random flies, only 2 of them showed I had anything on the guide, and one of those only showed 1 date, not all three. These searches had something in the guide, but none of mine came in in 5 out of 7.

Peleteria
Pararchytas

Helophilus fasciatus
Drone Fly (Eristalis tenax)
Toxomerus occidentalis



Scott

Mayhaps my first two examples (copied the names form my file folders) were frassed, I see my copies aren't very good.

I don't know how to make the hot links so please bear with me.
Searching Helophilus fasciatus, in the phrase in description line, and then either checking California and or adding in Santa Cruz, I do not get these images showing up.
http://bugguide.net/node/view/597760

Eristalis tenax in Phrase in description line, none show when I check the California box, yet some come up when I omit California.
mine is here
http://bugguide.net/node/view/597760

Toxomerus occidentalis
2 of Aaron S. show for Santa Cruz Co
mine are here
http://bugguide.net/node/view/599747/bgimage
http://bugguide.net/node/view/599718/bgimage
http://bugguide.net/node/view/599715/bgimage
http://bugguide.net/node/view/554479/bgimage

Trouble is, I'm getting comments about data points, and I'm not finding the data I need to manage mine.

This initially was a problem when I wanted to know what was in Santa Cruz Co, and never can find much of anything, and even after a year I only find sparse results with my photos, and I know it has missed Aaron and HandOff photos too that I had looked at in the past. Finding their name so I can get their ID #, since you can't subscribe to some members posts, hasn't always resulted in me finding them. I've been through a few puters this year so book marks are no good if they are in the on op ones.

We just looked through all 175 images of Peleteria, for example, and you have no images there, so you would get none in a search. We're clearing missing something in what you are asking. Can you help?

We looked at the 40 or so images in Pararchytas and none of those are yours either???

We just searched in all of Tachinidae and you have 11 images of 4 individuals here and none of the two species mentioned in your post.

That's not obvious and makes we wonder what type of search "Search" performs. I'd actually searched for "search" prior to posting my question but that also didn't help much.