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Make Manditory

Hi

I was going through the images of the Monarchs in order to decide if I should add an image from Connecticut. I feel if there were a few then I wouldn't post it. However, I noticed that some of the images of the Monarchs are o just the image and had no other info.

No state, no county no date collected and no place. Isn't this data important for Bugguide in order to eventually develop range maps for a particular species?

It's easy to make a form field when filling out the form a required field. That is, if the poster doesn't fill in the information, it just won't get posted. This in addition would cut down on the hundereds of images of the same insect.

Just a thought.

Not that simple
Sometimes when an image is taken in captivity, but shows important information about a species, we don't want to have erroneous location and date information. There are also cases where someone has an image they want identified, but doesn't remember when or where it was taken.

Yes, it's better to have certain information, but we can't just automatically exclude images that don't have it.

As for images of common species with no useful information- those are good candidates for pruning. Unless an image is of exceptional quality or shows something the others don't (including regional or seasonal variation or evidence of lack thereof) it should be frassed with a polite note explaining why. The main reason that it hasn't happened is that there are too many images for the editors to be aware of every one that doesn't belong (lately there's hardly time to breathe...).

Let us know of any candidates, and we'll try to take care of them.

 
Well, since you asked
How do you determine if an image was taken in captivity if there are no comments, just by looking at the image? Also, how would you know if the information provided would be erroneous if the information is excluded?

I see your point about ID requests but these images are in the guide.

And since you asked,

http://bugguide.net/node/view/39312/bgimage
http://bugguide.net/node/view/39270/bgimage

While they are nice shots, there's additional nice shots of other Monarchs with complete info. I'm just thinking from the standpoint of a researcher or student who has a project for school. Bugguide can be a great resource in that respect.

Also on another note, I put a comment on this image, since you are an editor maybe you can move this to the proper spot?

http://bugguide.net/node/view/60268

 
I'm not really sure...
what to do with those images. The context suggests they were taken in a butterfly house, along with some Zebra Long-wings uploaded at the same time. What apparently prompted that were some other images clearly labeled as taken in a butterfly house uploaded by someone else.

If the images mentioned were taken in a butterfly house, then leaving out the State and Date information was appropriate- though it would have been better to have an explanation in the comments.

If it were dozens of images, it might be more straightforward- but I don't know about selectively doing this for just 5 out of all the butterfly house images we have. What do some of the other editors think?

 
The point you have to consider
is that many of the Guide images start out as ID Requests and are moved by the contributors to the guide. To make certain fields mandatory for some, you'd have to make them that way for all.

Currently, the only mandatory items I know of are the title and the image, with some kind of half-mandatory status for the immature/adult fields.

The last item is instructive: You can upload lepidoptera images to ID request with no data, then move them to the guide. It's only if you click Edit while the item is already in the guide under Lepidoptera or some subtaxon that the restriction kicks in: it won't accept the edit until you check either adult or immature.

In the case of adult vs. immature, that's no problem- it's obvious. But what if someone leaves out one of your items in ID Request, then moves it to the guide. It could go for a long time before someone notices, and by then the contributor may not be available. There's no way to fill in that kind of information without making things up.

 
I understand but
I really don't mean to go around in circles here but even in ID request, one of the manditory things should be State, County and Town where someone snapped the picture. Even if you don't know the county at least state and town will give up a county with a little research so don't make county a required field to fill in, only optional. Heck you can just make the State mandatory for that matter.

That way when it moves to the guide section, bingo, that information is already provided.

In terms of immature, male female or adult is not as important as to where the specimen was located when the image was taken.

This may cut down on ID requests but in the end which is more important, ID'ing someones image which may or may not make it into the guide or having accurate distribution information that can be plotted out on a map. Because to me another pretty picture of an insect which we already have in the guide with no important information is just that, another pretty picture.

 
Priorities
Yes, the data and mapping is important, but not the most important. We're an identification and reference resource. If it comes down to a choice between the public's access to ID request and having images in the guide for as many species as possible vs.insuring that our range maps are filled out, the former has to prevail.

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