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Mark Rosenstein
Feb 27, 2017, 4:10:18 PM2/27/17
to iNaturalist
Sometime in the last week, new common names have been loaded for most marine fish species. Not just additional names, but new primary names, so that most reef fish now show names I've never heard of before. For example, Coris aygula is now "Redblotched Wrasse" instead of "Clown Coris", Cephalopholis argus is now Peacock Rockcod instead of Peacock Grouper, etc.
What happened? I assume these were bulk loaded, since there seem to be many of them. Whose perspective do the names make sense from? Can we reload them to apply to only that country? None of these names are in any field guide I've seen.
This relates to two points I have made before. Can we have a location for common name preference that is separate from any other location usage on the site? Because I do not want every search to assume I only care about the United States, I have no default location specified on my account, so cannot choose U.S. centric common names. And can we have a preference to prefer scientific names over common names, with various parts of the site that display taxa names switching to only show, or at least highlight the scientific name over the common name? I know this is something only a minority of users would want, but to those of us who are deeply into taxonomy and care about names, it will help. Without this, I'm forced to "fix" every nonsensical common name I see applied to my observations.
-Mark
What happened? I assume these were bulk loaded, since there seem to be many of them. Whose perspective do the names make sense from? Can we reload them to apply to only that country? None of these names are in any field guide I've seen.
This relates to two points I have made before. Can we have a location for common name preference that is separate from any other location usage on the site? Because I do not want every search to assume I only care about the United States, I have no default location specified on my account, so cannot choose U.S. centric common names. And can we have a preference to prefer scientific names over common names, with various parts of the site that display taxa names switching to only show, or at least highlight the scientific name over the common name? I know this is something only a minority of users would want, but to those of us who are deeply into taxonomy and care about names, it will help. Without this, I'm forced to "fix" every nonsensical common name I see applied to my observations.
-Mark
Scott Loarie
Feb 27, 2017, 4:19:02 PM2/27/17
to inatu...@googlegroups.com, Mark McGrouther
Hi Mark -
I've done some work for Mark McGrouther (cc'd) of
http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/australasian-fishes adding fish
common names he's providing.
I imagine there might be some disagreement about which name should be
the 'global English common name'
Can you and Mark work together to come up with some guidelines for
which names should have this top-priority global designation?
Re: your questions. For each lexicon, iNat has a bunch of common names
that can be associated with a place and have a priority ranking. If
you have your account set to a place you'll see the highest priority
common names for that place. If you don't, you'll see the highest
priority 'global' common name.
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
--------------------------------------------------
I've done some work for Mark McGrouther (cc'd) of
http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/australasian-fishes adding fish
common names he's providing.
I imagine there might be some disagreement about which name should be
the 'global English common name'
Can you and Mark work together to come up with some guidelines for
which names should have this top-priority global designation?
Re: your questions. For each lexicon, iNat has a bunch of common names
that can be associated with a place and have a priority ranking. If
you have your account set to a place you'll see the highest priority
common names for that place. If you don't, you'll see the highest
priority 'global' common name.
Best,
Scott
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "iNaturalist" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to inaturalist...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to inatu...@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/inaturalist.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
--------------------------------------------------
Scott R. Loarie, Ph.D.
Co-director, iNaturalist.org
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Dr
San Francisco, CA 94118
--------------------------------------------------
Mark McGrouther
Feb 27, 2017, 4:55:07 PM2/27/17
to iNaturalist, Mark.Mc...@austmus.gov.au
Hi Mark (and Scott),
Sorry to have caused you grief. I agree with you that the common names issue is problematic. The problem you now face is the same as the one that we had to deal with here in Australia. Nobody here had ever heard of a Ballyhoo for example whereas everyone knows what an eastern sea garfish is. As Scott said, last week there was an upload of the agreed Australian standard names for fishes. This problem is now resolved for Australian users with only a few issues for our NZ colleagues (who are also part of Australasian Fishes) and, by the sounds of it, larger flow on issues for US users. I like the fact that for most users, common names are linked to their account region. Your interest in fishes worldwide, which is hugely beneficial to the global ichthyological community, seems to be working to your disadvantage in this case. What would be ideal is to link the common name to the location at which the observation was made. If a fish was observed in Australia, the observation would display the Australian standard name, if elsewhere, the name for that region. What do you think?
Cheers,
Mark
Scott Loarie
Feb 27, 2017, 5:05:43 PM2/27/17
to inatu...@googlegroups.com, Mark McGrouther
If you guys don't mind - lets keep this thread to data solutions,
rather than software solutions. We could start another thread for
changing the software.
Re: data solutions. The main issue is that the community (and would be
great if Mark & Mark could take the lead here) need to come up with a
list or source of preferred Global common English names (e.g.
Fishbase). If that exists, then we could make sure Mark M's names are
always the priority fro OZ but not necessarily the priority globally.
The problem now is that since there's no consensus on what we should
be using for the Global common English names there's no way to say it
should be this vs that because its all arbitrary at this point
Best,
Scott
rather than software solutions. We could start another thread for
changing the software.
Re: data solutions. The main issue is that the community (and would be
great if Mark & Mark could take the lead here) need to come up with a
list or source of preferred Global common English names (e.g.
Fishbase). If that exists, then we could make sure Mark M's names are
always the priority fro OZ but not necessarily the priority globally.
The problem now is that since there's no consensus on what we should
be using for the Global common English names there's no way to say it
should be this vs that because its all arbitrary at this point
Best,
Scott
Scott Loarie
Feb 27, 2017, 5:18:14 PM2/27/17
to Mark McGrouther, inatu...@googlegroups.com
> Keeping the newly loaded Australian standard names for Australian and New Zealand observations (I'll check on the latter) and using the FIshbase names (those previously used by iNaturalist) for the rest of the world works for me.
The software currently doesn't apply names based on the location of
the observation - it applies them based on the account preferences of
the user. So Mark M, if the common names you prefer were only
prioritized for OZ, you and all of your colleagues would have to make
sure to add Australia to their user accounts. Otherwise you'd see the
'global names'. Are you sure you're ok with this?
Re: the global names, I'd be happy to use Fishbase for them. Does that
work for you Mark R? Otherwise, I could just restore them to whatever
they were before the OZ names were added from a DB backup. I guess I'd
prefer the former
Scott
On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 2:13 PM, Mark McGrouther
<Mark.Mc...@austmus.gov.au> wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
>>>> Re: data solutions. The main issue is that the community (and would be great if Mark & Mark could take the lead here) need to come up with a list or source of preferred Global common English names (e.g.Fishbase). If that exists, then we could make sure Mark M's names are always the priority fro OZ but not necessarily the priority globally.
>
> Keeping the newly loaded Australian standard names for Australian and New Zealand observations (I'll check on the latter) and using the FIshbase names (those previously used by iNaturalist) for the rest of the world works for me.
>
> Cheers,
> Mark
> Click here to read the Australian Museum email disclaimer: The Australian Museum email disclaimer:
The software currently doesn't apply names based on the location of
the observation - it applies them based on the account preferences of
the user. So Mark M, if the common names you prefer were only
prioritized for OZ, you and all of your colleagues would have to make
sure to add Australia to their user accounts. Otherwise you'd see the
'global names'. Are you sure you're ok with this?
Re: the global names, I'd be happy to use Fishbase for them. Does that
work for you Mark R? Otherwise, I could just restore them to whatever
they were before the OZ names were added from a DB backup. I guess I'd
prefer the former
Scott
On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 2:13 PM, Mark McGrouther
<Mark.Mc...@austmus.gov.au> wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
>>>> If you guys don't mind - lets keep this thread to data solutions, rather than software solutions. We could start another thread for changing the software.
>
> Roger that.
>>>> If you guys don't mind - lets keep this thread to data solutions, rather than software solutions. We could start another thread for changing the software.
>
>
>>>> Re: data solutions. The main issue is that the community (and would be great if Mark & Mark could take the lead here) need to come up with a list or source of preferred Global common English names (e.g.Fishbase). If that exists, then we could make sure Mark M's names are always the priority fro OZ but not necessarily the priority globally.
>
> Keeping the newly loaded Australian standard names for Australian and New Zealand observations (I'll check on the latter) and using the FIshbase names (those previously used by iNaturalist) for the rest of the world works for me.
>
>>>> The problem now is that since there's no consensus on what we should be using for the Global common English names there's no way to say it should be this vs that because its all arbitrary at this point
>
> Understood. I'll check with my NZ colleagues (who are part of the Australasian Fishes Project) that it is alright with them, but for me, the solution is as mentioned above.
>>>> The problem now is that since there's no consensus on what we should be using for the Global common English names there's no way to say it should be this vs that because its all arbitrary at this point
>
>
> Cheers,
> Mark
Scott Loarie
Feb 27, 2017, 5:39:30 PM2/27/17
to Mark McGrouther, inatu...@googlegroups.com
Hi Mark,
No I mean 'Place' under your 'Account'
On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 2:30 PM, Mark McGrouther <Mark.Mc...@austmus.gov.au> wrote:
Hey Scott and Mark,
>>> The software currently doesn't apply names based on the location of
the observation - it applies them based on the account preferences of
the user. So Mark M, if the common names you prefer were only
prioritized for OZ, you and all of your colleagues would have to make
sure to add Australia to their user accounts. Otherwise you'd see the
'global names'. Are you sure you're ok with this?
Do you mean that they have to subscribe to Australia in their preferences (pic below)?
There are a bunch of Australian entries – I need to speak with you about this at some stage.
There is an issue with Skype across the entire museum. Once this is fixed I’d like to have a chat.
Re: the global names, I'd be happy to use Fishbase for them. Does that
work for you Mark R? Otherwise, I could just restore them to whatever
they were before the OZ names were added from a DB backup. I guess I'd
prefer the former
Either works for me.
Cheers,
Mark
>> an email to inaturalist+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
>> To post to this group, send email to inatu...@googlegroups.com.
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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
> --------------------------------------------------
>
>
> Click here to read the Australian Museum email disclaimer: The Australian Museum email disclaimer:
--
--------------------------------------------------
Scott R. Loarie, Ph.D.
Co-director, iNaturalist.org
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Dr
San Francisco, CA 94118
--------------------------------------------------
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Mark Rosenstein
Feb 27, 2017, 6:22:09 PM2/27/17
to iNaturalist, Mark.Mc...@austmus.gov.au
The whole place thing does not work for me, as I mentioned in my original post. I have no place entered on my profile because if I do, way too many parts of the site filter for only creatures and places in the United States. I don't want every search limited in this way, so cannot set a place. Which means I can't express a preference for common names. PLEASE, PLEASE, split these two preferences!
-Mark
-Mark
AfriBats
Feb 28, 2017, 6:30:52 AM2/28/17
to iNaturalist, Mark.Mc...@austmus.gov.au
Same here: I've set 'Locale' to default as the English interface works fine for me, and the 'Place' to Germany as I prefer to have the German names displayed where they are available. However, as has been mentioned here and in other threads, this automatically sets "Germany" as the default filter place on the Observations page, which I find rather annoying. Would be really good to keep these things separate!
Jakob
Jakob
Mark Rosenstein
Feb 28, 2017, 10:31:35 AM2/28/17
to iNaturalist
So I've taken some time to think about this, rather than just insist that I want the names I know on the site.
I initially learned my fish names from Gerry Allen's books (an Australian). Can you point to one (or more) field guides for the wider Indo-Pacific that use the names recently installed for reef fish? I could buy a new field guide and learn new names. If these new names are primarily used in Australia and not elsewhere, then perhaps they should have been loaded for Australians, and not changed the default global names.
I wonder if the way iNat chooses common names to show is the best way. I don't actually want to see the preferred name in the United States for an animal I see half-way around the word. I want to see the preferred (English language) common name in the place where I saw it. There are some fish that are circumtropical (found all the way around the world) and known by different names in different places. And If I am diving in Australia, then the names that the local dive guides are using should make sense.
-Mark
I initially learned my fish names from Gerry Allen's books (an Australian). Can you point to one (or more) field guides for the wider Indo-Pacific that use the names recently installed for reef fish? I could buy a new field guide and learn new names. If these new names are primarily used in Australia and not elsewhere, then perhaps they should have been loaded for Australians, and not changed the default global names.
I wonder if the way iNat chooses common names to show is the best way. I don't actually want to see the preferred name in the United States for an animal I see half-way around the word. I want to see the preferred (English language) common name in the place where I saw it. There are some fish that are circumtropical (found all the way around the world) and known by different names in different places. And If I am diving in Australia, then the names that the local dive guides are using should make sense.
-Mark
Mark McGrouther
Feb 28, 2017, 5:29:50 PM2/28/17
to iNaturalist
Hi Mark,
Agreed. Seeing the US names for Australian fishes made no sense. Nobody hear had ever heard of a ballyhoo.
Having the local names appear for fishes from that region makes good sense and in my humble opinion would be an excellent target for iNaturalist to aim for.
I have consulted with my partners in crime in New Zealand and they have the same problem with some of the Australian names.
Scott,
In the meantime, I know this doesn't really solve MarkR's issue, but if my colleagues in NZ were to supply a list of NZ common names, could these be loaded as was done for the Australian names? Of course they would need to set their Place to NZ.
Cheers,
Mark
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