The iSpot upload has started.

[Chris Vynbos]

Just a note to say thanks to Scott  et al for facilitating the migration of our South African observations from iSpot to iNat. I see it has started, and it is looking impressively seamless. I can imagine that it will be frustrating for the rest of the iNat users to have the /comments flooded with our obs, but pls bear with us. It will be fantastic for us to have all our data on iNat so that we don't have to keep referring to iSpot for IDs. 

Thanks also to Tony Rebelo who has been working so hard for so long to get our data captured and migrated. 

Chris

[Scott Loarie]

Thanks Chris,

Credit goes to Tony Rebelo and his SANBI colleagues for all their hard work coordinating (cat herding?)

A little background for folks not aware of whats underway: Tony Rebelo et al. coordinated with ~347 individual people who wanted their data associated with their iSpot accounts copied over to their iNaturalist accounts. 

We started the data copy today which, when it is finished, will copy over 263,721 obs 647,924 idents & 211,015 comments (originally posted to ispotnature.org) each associated with individual users. Aside from a minority of house-keeping comments, these data are uploading with their original (iSpot) 'created at' dates so you won't see them in the recent observation feeds.

You can keep track here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:iSpot%20reference%20(2014-2017)

The observations are currently uploading rather slowly so as not to put any noticeable strain on the site (1 every few seconds) so expect this upload to continue chugging away for a few weeks.

We feel strongly that iNaturalist is a social network (community) first and not strictly a data archive. And in the past we've often shy'd away from requests to bulk upload observations not associated with individual people. But since this request overwhelmingly came from real people like Chris who are part of a cohesive and awesome Southern African naturalist community who wanted their own data copied over to their own accounts we thought that this request was well in line with the community priorities of iNaturalist. It is also very analogous to a data transfer we did in coordination with the New Zealand Biodiversity Recording Network when their community migrated over from an older version of http://naturewatch.org.nz/ not associated with iNaturalist back in 2013.

But as Chris said, apologies in advance if there is any unforeseen annoyances associated with this data transfer and as always please let us know if you see anything fishy.

Best,

Scott

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--------------------------------------------------
Scott R. Loarie, Ph.D.
Co-director, iNaturalist.org
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Dr
San Francisco, CA 94118
--------------------------------------------------

[tony rebelo]

Yes.  Thanks everyone for your patience!

If you are able to help with the observations without an identity it will really be appreciated.  Please check the comments: in many cases an ID has been made but the name is not yet in the Dictionary.  Please add the name to iNat if possible rather than merely identifying as plant, animal or fungus.  This applies especially to Lichens: on iSpot we were using a 1950s lichen list, and many of these (some now synonyms) appear not to be on iNaturalist yet.

It is fun watching the species totals. A comparison of what I call the local view: 
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:iSpot%20reference%20(2014-2017)&subview=table&verifiable=any&view=species

vs what I call the tourist view: 

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=113055&subview=table&verifiable=any&view=species

(note the local view is unashamedly Cape Floral Kingdom, getting observers - other than tourists -  from otherside of the Hex River mountains in Darkest Africa has not been easy!)

(note: as the migration proceeds the local view will overwhelm the tourist view by over 10: 1)

if you notice any issues please contact me at is...@sanbi.org.za

Issues so far: 

* A few observers migrated late: their observations wont have pictures (e.g. chris walker, john measy) - we will upload them when the migration is done.  No need to comment on these.

* We have picked up a 'fuzzy match" error Leptotes (A) - the Butterfly, not the Orchid - was fuzzily matched as a Crawfish Frog.  There are 100 cases where this is the final ID (and 186 observations in total will be affected).  We have not yet decided how to deal with these.  You are welcome to help correct the misidentification.  Please keep an eye on: 
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?verifiable=true&taxon_id=65974&place_id=113055&preferred_place_id=113055&locale=en  (or if you are a purist: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual%2Cresearch&taxon_id=65974&place_id=97392  - the ones that look like butterflies are not frogs!!  ::: ID as Leptotes (Butterfly not Orchid!))

Looking forward to making our mark on the map!

[Charlie Hohn]

wow, very exciting! The community melding may have had its bumps, but i want to say i'm excited for this and it will be wonderful to have all these new people and their data

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Charlie Hohn
Montpelier, Vermont

[Charlie Hohn]

also... a minor issue but i see at least some of the iSpot observations have odd font size with the title size extending to the comments. See attached from https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/10806521

" Healthy Leucadendron" is in huge text and i don't think it is meant to be.

Nothing serious of course, but it does look a bit odd

[Ian Toal]

I wondered what all the odd observations were on the live comments page! I don't understand the details of such a data merge, but from what I've read here it sounds complicated. Thank you to all involved, and don't worry about the 'flood' of observations I suspect we'll all just make out fine.

Ian 

[Chris Vynbos]

Another oddity: all apostrophes are becoming "^". So lots of "it^s" etc in the comments. 

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Charlie Hohn
Montpelier, Vermont

[Alex Rebelo]

Yip, well done for making this happen. Lots of hard work.

I'm looking forward to having all my observations in one place.

[jesse rorabaugh]

Some IDs are not properly transferring:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/10783767
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/10783861
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/10783880

[jesse rorabaugh]

This does not appear to be a small number of IDs. It looks like at least half the "Unknown" observations from South Africa are from the upload:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?iconic_taxa=unknown&order=asc&place_id=6986

[Chris Vynbos]

Thanks. We are working on them. Most of them are migrating successfully, but the 'unknowns' had some anomalies in the original data or had taxa that aren't in the iNat dictionary. It will take a few days to clear them all.

[Chris Vynbos]

7days and it looks like we are 2/3rd of the way through. 187k of 287k obs. 

On Thursday, 12 April 2018 04:41:20 UTC+2, Chris Vynbos wrote:

[Charlie Hohn]

random question, is the ispot upload omitted from https://www.inaturalist.org/stats (except the total observations part)? I am not seeing the bump i expected.

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[Chris Cheatle]

Just a theory, not a fact, but the iSpot observations appear to retain their original submitted date into iSpot in the new iNat record, so I suspect they are just blending into the historical timeline data.

On Thursday, April 19, 2018 at 8:02:46 AM UTC-4, Charlie Hohn wrote:

random question, is the ispot upload omitted from https://www.inaturalist.org/stats (except the total observations part)? I am not seeing the bump i expected.

On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 3:46 AM, Chris Vynbos <vyn...@gmail.com> wrote:

7days and it looks like we are 2/3rd of the way through. 187k of 287k obs. 

On Thursday, 12 April 2018 04:41:20 UTC+2, Chris Vynbos wrote:

Just a note to say thanks to Scott  et al for facilitating the migration of our South African observations from iSpot to iNat. I see it has started, and it is looking impressively seamless. I can imagine that it will be frustrating for the rest of the iNat users to have the /comments flooded with our obs, but pls bear with us. It will be fantastic for us to have all our data on iNat so that we don't have to keep referring to iSpot for IDs. 

Thanks also to Tony Rebelo who has been working so hard for so long to get our data captured and migrated. 

Chris

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[Mark Rosenstein]

I've just discovered a bunch of imported iSpot observations of captive creatures, not marked as captive.  Did iSpot not mark observations like this, or did we lose the information during import?

Here's an example: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/11102478, which is at a public aquarium.

-Mark

[Chris Vynbos]

iSpot marked obs as captive via habitat, in this case the habitat was " Zoos and Aquaria". This information as I understand it will be added separately as an observation field "Habitat (sAfr)". Whether it is planned that the process will automatically mark the organism as 'not wild' I don't know.