Wouldn't it be nice if we could see all the photos and videos that have been taken of a particular waterway, all on the same page, at the click of a button?
This is what I think it might look like: Currently, the Cat-eLog main page lists species by family, by genera, by common name, and by synonym... but it doesn't let users look at locations. True, a person can jump to the Species Search page and simply select a specific "Distribution" to run a species search from there; but the problem with this is that the Distribution drop-down menu doesn't lead to more information about the location; it only gives us the names of fishes there. Also, this drop-down menu is disembodied from a map. And for a nOOb like myself, I have no idea where most of these location names are found! (e.g., Where the heck is "Bombo?" I suppose I ought to know, but I don't {my apologies to people who live there for not knowing where they are}). So... On the Cat-eLog home page, create a new link under the "Sections" heading called something like "Distribution," "Locations," or "Waterways." When a person clicks on that link, they are taken to a page which provides both a text-based menu (like the current distribution drop-down menu, for people who know where they want to go), and a clickable map-based menu (for people who just know an area, but don't have a specific lake, river or tributary in mind). These two menus would itemize all the rivers, waterways, and tributaries which are in the database. (This list would be an exact replica of the inventory of locations/names which are currently displayed when a person performs a "Species Search" and has to select "Distribution." But on this new page, the display could be simplified and cleaned up by using a clickable map which hyperlinks to the proper continent or regional submenus; and from there, the user could select a specific river, waterway, nation, or region.)
When a person clicks on any of the links in this new list, they would get redirected to a new page which displays thumbnails of all photographs/videos showing that particular location/habitat (this is somewhat equivalent to the display which a user can currently obtain if they type the name of a river or location into the search window on the Image Captions page, except I envision excluding photos of fish {but see below}. Also, the current search system requires that the user manually type in the specific river or waterway name they want, instead of displaying it as a map). The thumbnails would include all photos/videos for that locality: both generic photos/videos of the waterway, and specific photos/videos for microhabitats for particular species of fish. Hovering over an image causes a popup window to display the image full size (similar to what happens on the My Aquaria page). Clicking on the image redirects the user to the actual page where the image is housed, which might be on a particular species' CLOG page. If by chance there are no photos/videos of a particular waterway, the screen displays a simple message to that effect, such as, "There are currently no photos on file for this location."
I envision the location images/videos filling the upper portion of the page. Below this there would be displayed a complete "Species Search" for that particular location. (This is the same output that a user currently receives if they click on a Distribution location hyperlink for any species from its CLOG page)
I also envision changing the way these CLOG page distribution location hyperlinks work (see attached photo of CLOG page), so that they work in the fashion that is described above. In other words, if I am viewing the CLOG for and I click on the link for "Paraguay" under the Habitat Information>Distribution>La Plata, Parana, Paraguay, then I would not simply be sent to the Species Search for this location (which is what happens now), but rather I would be sent to the page described in this proposal - with the locality thumbnails for this specific habitat across the top of the page and the usual Species Search below that.
By linking the images to the location instead of the fish, and also by creating hyperlinks to the images from the CLOG pages and from the main Cat-eLog page, this allows users to find images for the same locality by navigating from any relevant species CLOG or from the main page, in case the user doesn't have a particular species in mind, but just wants to see what "Rio XYZ" happens to look like.
How might this feature be programmed? I imagine something like this: When a user clicks on a link for a particular waterway, e.g., "Upper Amazon," then a software "bot" will perform an automated image caption search for "Upper Amazon." All location results for that name will be displayed. Then below that, the page would display a standard species search for that same water way. The biggest programming challenge I envision is this: If we don't want the images to include photos of individual fish (e.g., something like this for the word "Trinidad"), then I don't know how your "bot" would recognize that type of image and remove it... But then again, maybe the bot wouldn't need to remove fish images, and the user could simply accept these additional images, too, as long as the total number of images/videos for particular location is not too great.
As I said in my preface, maybe this functionality already exists on PlanetCatfish. But if it doesn't yet exist, I think it would be a really neat feature.
Cheers, Eric
EDIT: A partial filter to exclude fish images could be accomplished by simply adding the word "habitat" to the image caption search function. This would help because many photos of habitats are labeled "habitat" in their caption. The risk, however, is that any habitat images which DON'T have the term habitat in their caption would also get lost from the search.
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And yes, those with the programming skills have lots of pressures already. I agree entirely.