PlanetCatfish.com

Hi Jools,

As a follow-up to our conversations about image caption length and the intended use of captions as a search help, I'm finding that when catch location is known and is written into the caption, it becomes too long for the field, and doesn't leave room for other caption text (such as "close-up of head"). Moreover, catch location can be written in so many different ways (with or without larger drainage, with/without state or nation name, longer names abbreviated or not), the result is that as a text, catch location written out like this is almost never going to result in a meaningful searchable entry

Would it be possible to add a new field to images for Catch Location? The field could behave like others in that if left blank, it wouldn't appear when displayed.

Pros and limitations I envision:

Pros:

• It provides a field to list catch info (when available) without using up the caption (i.e., adds space for more info).
• it frees up the caption field for its intended use, to be searchable in a meaningful way.
• If done right, it also might be searchable by itself (as is the caption field now).
• If searchable, then as more wild-caught fish pics are added with catch location info, users might be better able to recognize regional color variants, etc.

Limitations: If merely for display (and not searchable), maybe no big limitations other than initial coding (and adding a field to database). To be searchable,

• the entry of info would need to be consistent in format from fish to fish.
• the entry would probably require multiple input fields for [name of water body][drainage][state/district][country]. (Perhaps if only water body name and nation are filled in, a search would return a broader list of matches if multiple water bodies share same name in same country)

These limitations could be overcome if, instead of providing a fill-in field for name of waterway, the entry utilized the existing Bodies of Water database with a pull-down menu. This could be augmented with a nonsearchable text entry field for small waterways not on the database. If the input includes both (e.g., a typed name for a small river along the Rio Meta, followed by "Meta" from the Occurrence menu), then the figures display would have location as a concatenation of the two names, with the Occurrence name being searchable but the more restricted small river name not searchable. If the entry were searchable, the result of a search would be images tagged with the same location (just as is the result of a caption search currently).

I do not, emphasize not, envision this tied to mapping of pins on the species clog page because I suspect it might congest the maps. But if it's not an issue, that wouldn't hurt I suppose.

Just something to consider. Thanks for listening (reading and contemplating).

Cheers, Eric

Eric,
Is the answer for catch location to just add geolocation information? The problem with "common names" for catch locations is that they are confusing and change over time. Anyone that has worked with older descriptions has dealt with this. Also, these names are used over and over again across multiple places in the same or different river system adding to the confusion.
Just some food for thought.
-Shane

Shane wrote: ↑03 Mar 2021, 13:08Eric,
Is the answer for catch location to just add geolocation information? The problem with "common names" for catch locations is that they are confusing and change over time. Anyone that has worked with older descriptions has dealt with this. Also, these names are used over and over again across multiple places in the same or different river system adding to the confusion.
Just some food for thought.
-Shane

Indeed that is all true. I didn't have geolocation in mind specifically, but rather a means to remove any catch location info from the standard "image caption" line. Jools and I have been discussing the purpose of the image caption line and how it's useful for searching related images. But there are multiple types of info that have been included historically in that entry at PCF, which is fine until an image has two items of info to add there, and the search function linked to it cannot disarticulate the details but by default has to search for all info lumped together. My thought is that if a separate line is available for specific categories of info linked to a photo (in this case "catch location") then it can be separated away from other types of info (anatomical, color pattern, perspective of photo, etc) which are often included in the "image caption" line and thus make both types of info searchable. And if an image doesn't come with catch location, that field is left blank and doesn't appear on the display to the end-user.

I hope that made sense.
Cheers, Eric

The image caption was only meant to be initially used to show a fish from a location that was different from the norm or a regional variant etc. However, it's (happily) grown to be a bigger thing often added when that info is available.

Geodata is a great idea, but it is also rather prone to error. At least 5% if not 10% of the co-ords from scientific papers are either wrong or at best incorrectly formatted. That said, info captured IN pictures is 100% solid and we're getting more of those for sure. Also, some entries have the institution/collection ref no, which is, I think, linked to other data including location.

The best idea here is that we could take in catch location to the review of all image captions that I'd been talking with Eric about. That's 20,000+ images, but it would be the way to do this. On my radar, only 21 "to do" things before it excepting bugs. I appreciate, very helpfully, Admins (Eric has already offered) could do the bulk of the review, if they wished, but I still need to build and test the rig to do that first.

Will make it happen!

Cheers,


Jools