Plea for assistance...

[SteveH]

Hi folks, this is a lengthy but important post, so bear with us - go get a cuppa!

Many, if not most of you will appreciate that between October and March (in particular) much of our combined spare time is dedicated to all manner of tasks that culminate in the production of the annual Cheshire Moth Report. The workload associated with this is growing year on year and its come to the point that we are becoming overwhelmed by it all and are looking for some assistance - this means, from you The issues surround the fact that we are getting more and more records each year and trying to collate and thereafter validate everything is naturally growing at the same pace - meaning we have to spend more and more time during the winter doing pretty much nothing else so as to get the report published before the new moth season comes around. Ideally we are looking for one or two people to lend a hand on the data input side of things, begining right now.

To further make life easier, we would like everyone to adopt a minor change when posting their sightings onto the forum and its really simple - we need you to let us know that you are recording the sighting either in MAPMATE, our customised TEMPLATE or some other SPREADSHEET by adding the single word comment (in capitals please) of either MAPMATE, TEMPLATE or SPREADSHEET to your post so we know that we need do nothing else. Conversely, any posts that do not have such a comment we know need to be recorded and this is where our helpers would come in - any such records would be transcribed into a version of our template and the comment of RECORDED added as a reply to the post. We are not the first to adopt this method of acquiring data and it looks to work really well for the UK Hoverflies group in particular - which has thousands of active recorders. We all know that photographs make or break the final Moth Report and another aspect of our helpers work would be collecting photographs of rarities and scarcities taken from the forum as well. We fully understand that there are some folk out there who have their own recording system geared to personal requirements and that's perfectly fine - the intentions here aren't to force change, just to reduce our overall workload through gentle tweaking. Wildlife Recorder users for example (myself included) need only do as they have been to date - their data is straightforward to reconfigure; posts from those users should be tagged with SPREADSHEET.

Perhaps un-surprsingly, we get numerous different shapes and sizes of spreadsheet and extracting their data into a usable format is very time consuming and in one or two cases we've actually written code to automate the process of reconfiguring the data so its directly transferable into our template. This would be another side of the work we would like to get help with. For those of you using your own spreadsheets it would make lives easier if we had data that is easily extractable, in separate columns, like:

<Species name>, <Site>, <Grid reference of site>, <Recorders name>,<Determiners name>, <Date>, <Quantity> and <trapping method> - sometimes the sex of the individual is also helpful for some species - so this would be an example:

Common Carpet, Deansfield Way, Elton, SJ123456, Steve Holmes, Steve Holmes, 03/06/2019, 1, Robinson trap 125W

...or better yet, consider using our template instead



If you are interested in lending a hand then please do get in touch with either of us as soon as possible - records are already piling in! Any assistance would be hugely appreciated and of course fully acknowledged within the pages of the Moth Report.

Cheers,
Steve Holmes and Steve Hind

[melbellingham]

Morning All,

I suggest another tea or coffee.

I’m not surprised that our County Recorders (CR’s) are struggling with their task. No matter how many records any County Recorder receives, it appears that they always want to increase the number of records each year, which ultimately increases the workload.

I understand why you are requesting assistance and if I can help you I will, but can you clarify for me the idea of extracting records from the forum?

When I post onto the forum, I usually do so because I have recorded a new or infrequent moth to my garden or other site I have visited, but my post does not include much of the detail you are looking for (as shown in your example). That information is shown on my MAPMATE record sheet, which if I understand you correctly, would be the data you require.

How could anyone involved in seeking the ‘unrecorded’ records from posts on the forum, which might include the comment ‘caught in my garden trap last night’, for instance, be able to produce the desired spreadsheet or template?

All of the data required would need to be made available on the post, and if members of the forum want their records to be noted, surely it would be easier for them to use the template themselves.

However, there may be records of real value to both of our County Recorders that may crop up as ‘unidentified in the trap’, which would require at least 1 and possibly 2 replies, to any initial response to the request for assistance, replies that do not always materialize.

‘What’s this moth’ also crops up occasionally from people who do not regularly record moths, and are never heard from again.

Over the years, on regular holidays in various counties in England, Scotland and Wales I have always trapped moths. When passing on my records, I always look for recording information on the Moth Group websites and have come to the conclusion, that although the website suggestion is that CR’s are happy to receive records in any format, some of them are not.

Some will only accept them on valid recording templates. If this is the preferred method, should we also be adopting it in Cheshire. The job is hard enough, and I for one would never want to do it, but I do appreciate that we have 2 very enthusiastic and very capable CR’s.

If they want to keep increasing their workload, they should at least try to make it as easy as possible.

Mel.

[SteveH]

Thanks Mel,
an interesting reply and I'll try to answer as many points as I can - Steve HH can catch any I miss!

First up, apart from Steve HH visiting various museums to look at specimens in trays, we don't actively seek out more records - it's happening all by itself. In truth, I refuse to browse the likes of iRecord in particular nowadays because its actually too much trouble to get data from it without expending so much time I want to slit my wrists. So, we're probably missing a few records there as well as from other similar sources, some of which are almost certainly unknown to us. We are just in the enviable position of having an increasing number of recorders recording more and more moths - and that's fantastic.

Your point about insisting on a CR's template of choice for receiving records is actually something we did consider but for the moment at least have put it to one side as we do get a lot of data on our cutsomised template. However, to give an ultimatum that forces users to use it would almost certainly mean we would lose out in the end. We are accepting that some folks have systems in place they use for their own purposes and if what we get from them requires some work to get it into the format we require then so be it. Would everyone using our template make our lives easier, absolutely but the number of times its downloaded speaks for itself. Some of our most important data comes hand-written every year and for sure we would lose this if we went down the "template only" route. Others come through in Word documents...

Coming to extracting records from the forum next, if our suggestion of folks who post here tag their news with either MAPMATE, TEMPLATE or SPREADSHEET is adopted, then there's nothing more to do with any of them - we will get something at the end of the year and deal with whatever needs to be done by way of tweaking at that time. Conversely, untagged records need to be captured and realistically I'm not sure there's going to be that many. We take your point about there seeming to be a lot of information required and again, we are anticipating that over time more will be forthcoming from the post. We would have:

the species (for initial "unknowns", most get identified eventually )
the date
the recorder and determiner
the location, whether by provision of a grid reference or because we know that person A lives in say, Waverton. We can of course look back into the database to get a recorders' physical location if its not actually provided in the post
the quantity - almost everyone says "I had six of these in the trap last night"
the trapping method - again, we can look back if necessary to find out what trapping method person B at Burwardsley normally uses
Other aspects of the recording template, such as Sex, Status and Stage ar not essential, merely nice to haves and some are determinable from the trapping method

To sum up, since I'm conscious most people will be enduring caffeine overdoses now, the large majority of all records we get each year comes through from either Mapmate or our own customised template users. It's the other spreasheets, Word documents (where the data needs tweaking) and posted records that are not all currently being recorded we are aiming to address.

Steve HH and I are looking to prepare a guide for any volunteers on the helping out front so everything will be explained there more fully. Thanks for your offer of assistance to Mel, its really appreciated and to be clear on your final point, we're not trying to increase our workload.

Cheers,
Steve & Steve

[melbellingham]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your detailed reply.

From your initial ‘Plea for Assistance’ which suggested that ‘records are already piling in’ I drew the conclusion that there were more than a few posts containing information that didn’t arrive by the ‘preferred’ methods and that would need ‘tweaking’. If this is not the case, then I drew the wrong conclusion.

I assume however from your reply, that all recorders are not yet in possession of a computer and it would indeed be a loss if these had to go unrecorded.

However, having used my computer for all of my recording, since I first obtained one, way back in the Windows 95 era, and having tried all formats of Word documents and spreadsheets, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to use anything other than spreadsheets for their recording. It is so much easier than Word document preparation.

Another reason for trying to get recorders to use the ‘template’ can be illustrated by my own experience from a few years back, when I was asked by SteveHH to prepare some records in suitable format for importing into Mapmate. Moth names spelt incorrectly, or hyphenated when they shouldn’t have been, or not hyphenated when they should have been, would not be accepted and had to be altered. Mapmate will only accept words that Mapmate knows, which someone trying to help you might not know.

I know this all sounds very pessimistic, but I excel at pessimism.

Mel.

[SteveH]

Cheers Mel,

Well - when I said "piling in" I was of course excluding myself and others who have yet to really trouble the scorers on the moth front this year.

I do take your point regarding correct name spelling and of course our template won't allow anyone to type in a species name or any other Mapmate-dependent field unless it conforms to one of the preset options, so yes it's the best non-Mapmate solution.

Ok well I'm packing for sunnier climes now, so I'll see what's been going on when I get back in a couple of weeks.

Cheers,
Steve

[Mallyc]

Hi Steve
Happy to help out where ever I can
From your post I think you are asking for assistance with the records you are receiving that are not in Mapmate or on your spreadsheet templates. Is this correct?

Regards
Mal

[SteveH]

Hi Mal,

yes that's about the size of it - bascally those records that take most of Steve and my time to get into a format that is mapmate friendly.

Now I'm back from hols I can give more information so stay tuned and thanks for the offer of assistance!

Cheers,
Steve & Steve

[PaulHopkins]

I've posted a few reports both here and on Facebook since this original request to tags posts with MAPMATE/SPREADSHEET etc, and I've now realised to my chagrin that I've consistently forgotten to do this.

I note that Mel Bellingham has tagged his rECOrd account with the phrase "MapMate Recorder", would it help if everyone who uses MapMate (myself included) did this? If so, how did you do this, Mel?

Cheers
Paul

[melbellingham]

Hi Paul,

I don't know whether this is the best way to do it, but I wasn't sure how to tag the information suggested to my posts.

I hadn't noticed any such tags added to recent posts, and I could imagine that if I did do it on each of my posts, I would either miss adding the tag occasionally or more likely completely forget.

Some years back, it was suggested that members locations were added to their profile data, which appears on some of the members posts, but not all. Mine shows that I live in Great Sutton, and it just seemed like a good idea to add the term 'Mapmate Recorder' in a similar fashion, as it would be there on all of my posts.

I couldn't remember how to add info to my profile, so it took me a while to complete. The following might not be the correct method but it worked for me.

Log on, and when the first page opens, just below the search boxes on the left of the page you will see 'User Control Panel'. This shows also whether you have any private messages. Click on 'User Control Panel', and when this opens up click on profile.

My profile just shows my location. I didn't know where to add the additional information, so I just added it to this.

Mel.

[PaulHopkins]

Thanks Mel - that appears to have done it!

Paul

[SteveH]

Paul, Mel,

that's a great idea - nice one.

Cheers,
Steve