Status of PlantFiles issues

As most of you are aware, we did an overhaul to PlantFiles last year to make it more agile and mobile-device friendly. (And I have to say I have found it pretty helpful from my iPhone while I'm at garden centers to help me decide on a particular variety or species)

There are some known (and perhaps unknown/undocumented) issues that we need to address.

Here's what the tech team has on their list of to-do's:
1. Bring back the ability of members to edit their own image captions.
2. Box with "report an error", advanced search and other links missing from the right-hand side of some pages.
3. Move general search to more prominent location.

I can ask (but I can't make any promises) about adding "green" to the foliage choices and updating all plants that do not have anything checked for foliage color.

What else is still outstanding?

And what questions do you have regarding how to use PlantFiles? (e.g., looking forcertain plant details or navigation features, etc.)

"looting certain plant details" ??

When specifying details in an individual entry, another (relatively) new category is Other Details.

Please check all that apply:

**May be a noxious weed or invasive

**This plant may be considered a protected species; check before digging or gathering seeds

These two choices don't apply to many plants found in PlantFiles. I think a third choice of N/A for Not Applicable (as is found in other categories) should be available, so that this entry detail is not eternally unaddressed.

That's not a bad idea, but I'm not sure it's necessary, and here's why:

Those two important (if not typical) notations are useful in two ways - one is to "flag" a plant that you are adding to your trade list - it's important for a gardener to be aware if their new-found plant falls into either of those categories, as either warning should give pause to anyone offering (or being offered) the plant or seeds in a trade.

The other time it comes in handy is when someone is simply perusing a plant's details (for whatever reason), and it serves as a note of caution and education. That neither is marked is okay, I think. I'm open to other suggestions, but our goal is to balance "ease of use" for the community of members who add plants, and those who use the data provided by others.

Terry: I agree with everything you say above, but I guess my opinion comes from being annoyed that a detail has not been filled out. Must be an OCD thing, maybe prompted by DG admins urging participation in filling in missing details and now not being happy till they all are!

Didn't those choices to mark as invasive/noxious and rare/endangered used to be housed under a different heading? Or, were there a bunch more choices under Other Details along with these two? I know the subjects aren't necessarily new, just their exclusivity under this heading. Hmmm - maybe that's the rub. At least one of the choices doesn't match very well with Bloom Characteristics, but used to match well when the whole plant was considered (Attractive to Bees, Butterflies, and/or Birds).

Which brings up another point: there are three different categories related to blooms, but scattered around the entry - Bloom Characteristics, Bloom Color, and Bloom Time. These probably ought to be consecutive, if retained in the current format.

Further rumination brings forth this concern, too. The invasive/noxious or rare/endangered choices are applicable and important - but not everywhere. This detail doesn't allow for that kind of fine discrimination. As an alert to seek additional information, though, that IS good.

One last thought: what if the Danger category had a title mod to Danger/Concerns. Then the invasive/noxious and the rare/endangered attributes would be able to be noted (or not) in an area where concern is important, too.

I'm fine with however the assembled masses wish to proceed, but like the Foliage Color conundrum, there will always be the tug to mark an entry...somehow...

I still do not get how green might not be added as a choice. It makes no sense no matter how you look at it. To leave it as "unknown" is just bizarre for it is the main color of all foliage. Leaving it as 'unknown' means on each plant entry left like that, the color could be anything including red, white and blue striped. It is not an automatic green. The "unknown" means PlantFiles has no clue what the color is.

As I said on my post on the thread "Update from Internet Brands"
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=10194422

"Also the way the names now appear in PlantFiles is very peculiar. I have mentioned this before but no one has bothered to explain it to me. Why was it changed that the cultivar name no longer comes after the genus and species names but after the common name? How can this be correct?

Example. As written in PlantFiles http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/53223/
Species Rose 'Lutea'
Rosa banksiae

Isn't the correct name Rosa banksiae Lutea, not Species Rose 'Lutea' ?"

I would think if we are putting PlantFiles out to the world as a Plant Database we should at a minimum get the plant names correct.

Thank you for addressing our concerns.

Sometimes it's still hard (and slow) to scroll through the photos of a particular plant, especially if a plant has lots and lots of pics.

Is there any way to keep it user friendly for mobile users while still allowing desktop or laptop users to scan more than one-pic-at-a-time?

Like Kell, I am having a terrible time finding a species or cultivar in PlantFiles- they are ordered in some very bizarre alphabetical way, with species and cultivars all mixed up. Really, it should be Genus then species then cultivar or subspecies, so a group of them in a list are near ones in the same species. The plain species really should be at the top of the list, before all the cultivars.This would be rational, and orderly.
Thumbnails are too small, even on a big computer monitor.
I also agree about the photos, I just went to look at Zamia furfuracea. There were over 50 photos, so I looked at a couple then gave up. Having thumbnails, I could have zeroed in on one showing the cone, which I wanted to see. I did not want to scroll through 50 photos to find one.
I like VVs idea of Danger/Concerns heading.
The list Terry has is good, but let's get this other stuff fixed too.

My phone wont upload more than 1 pic in Plantfiles even if it says 50, there's nowhere to scroll to them even

Okay, let's take this one issue at a time (that will help me keep things straight.)

Why don't we have green as a foliage color?

The checkboxes are intended to help someone filter their search by various criteria. If most plants have green foliage, having that checkbox will not--generally speaking--help anyone narrow their search. It's a given that foliage is typically green. The other colors listed are the oddities that may be unique to certain species and cultivars.

That doesn't mean we can't add it, but that's why we didn't add it from the get-go.

Second issue - plant names.

As was the case in the old version of PlantFiles, the common name is first. So a rose is [x] rose 'Cultivar name'

Below that is the binomial name.

Below the photos is the full name including family.

That is the correct order, although we can argue about whether common/vernacular names should be given such prominence. That's a criticism we've long endured. Like the question about green foliage, it doesn't mean the way we are doing is is necessarily correct, but it is a continuation of how we have done it.

We can ask for a change - but I just want to clarify that this isn't a bug or something that is broken...it's actually a holdover from the old PlantFiles format.

I think you're actually describing something different - you're talking about the sort order for search results. Unless I'm mistaken, Kell is inquiring about the order of plant names within each entry.

Your search results are sorted by reviews (essentially "popularity"). You can change the sort to re-order it by common name, cultivar or availability - there's a pulldown list near the top to do that.

What we are missing from that pulldown list is the ability to sort it by species, which is important if you are searching through an entire genus. But here's a trick that will let you do that until we can get that added to the main search page.

Let's say you search for an entire genus...when the results appear, open one entry and click on the genus (it's a hyperlink.) When you do, you will be taken to a different page of search results. It also has a pulldown list and you can sort it by species from there.

As far as the size of thumbnails, I use a 13-inch Mac laptop, and the size of the thumbnails seems appropriate for the size of my screen. There really isn't much you should be trying to do from a thumbnail, other than possibly glance to see if it looks like it's in the right "ballpark" for your search. Across the entire universe of the interwebs, thumbnails are pretty small, and for good reason - devices are getting smaller and smaller.

That said, is this the entry you were looking at? http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/51472

Because I can see the cones really well from the thumbnail. And you can quickly zip through the thumbnails, 5 at a time by using the arrows to the left and right of them from the gallery page. If you need me to give you some screenshots to show you what I'm talking about, just let me know.

As I mentioned to pistil, you can quickly scroll through all the thumbnails, five at a time, for entries with lots of images. Is there a reason to see several large images simultaneously? Because adding that functionality would be harder since the design is meant to be responsive to each device, so it has to scale for phones and tablets.

What kind of phone? Quite honestly, we've always struggled with iOS devices,and unless Apple has made some dramatic changes, a lot of the issues have to do with limitations on the device that makes them unwilling to "play nice" with other platforms.

"Below the photos is the full name including family." I am confused. I do not see anything written below the photos.
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/277101/ In fact the only name I see is above the photo and the genus and species is not even anywhere on that page. It states as the only name "Tall Bearded Iris 'Champagne Elegance'" and I am sure that is not its real name. In fact I am almost 100%sure no one ever has called that iris "Tall Bearded Iris 'Champagne Elegance.'

"That is the correct order, although we can argue" Again I am confused, what is the correct order? Having the common name be before the cultivar name? Correct order according to whom?

I do not remember the names being like this before the changes. The fact remains the way it is now is incorrect. Even if it was incorrect before that does not make it correct now. LOL.

The reason I am almost 100% sure it was not like this before, is the reason Mike (Growin) mentioned in his post.( http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=10194543 ) I too now notice what a pain it is to copy a cultivar name to google it. Before I never had to copy first the genus and species name to an blank email, then go up and copy the cultivar name to paste in the blank email so then I can copy them both together to google or do whatever.

But I do not want it changed because of my inconvenience, I want it changed because it is incorrect!

This message was edited Feb 1, 2016 10:38 PM

Why do plants from PFs sometimes show up like this http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/59661/? It happens on my iPad and desktop. This has only been an issue since PFs was changed. Thanks.

How many of you remember the big fight about who the plant's pictures belong to? The poster, or the owner of the site? Who ever won that? Anybody know? Think DG lost a lot of members at that time also. Well, I think maybe whoever put them on the other sites like Pintrest, fb, etc. won out.

Gee, I always thought we checked the boxes to accurately describe the plant so people would know what the plant looked like when they read the entry. LOL. Search function was never in my thinking at all. Though I have never done a search using any of the plant characteristics. Even so, what if someone wants to search just for green foliage in a certain genus or species? Nothing would come up.

If you do not want to have a green foliage check box then you need to change what is on the plant entry page of all the green foliage plants and also those plants where the foliage color is really unknown from the present "Foliage Color: Unknown - Tell us"
to "Foliage probably green though maybe not."

I hate to sound like a curmudgeon but these things have been a constant irritation for months. And in the end what is right is right. Having "Foliage Color: Unknown - Tell us" is just wrong on all the known green foliage plant entries. Anyone looking at "Foliage Color: Unknown - Tell us" really has no idea if the foliage is in fact green or some other color.

Kell, see my screenshot. Beneath the image - do you see the plant's name?

Ahh, yes - sorry. The distortion has to do with the dimensions of the enlarged image in the gallery view, fighting against images that are oriented as portrait rather than landscape. We have brought this up with the techs (I know daylilySLP is among those who have images affected by this.) I don't have an ETA on it as a fix, but you're right - it is among the outstanding issues. I'll amend the list above.

Yes, the checkboxes provide details that someone reading the entry can then use. But they are also very important to someone looking for plants based on certain characteristics. Or when someone is filtering their search results to narrow them down to plants that meet certain criteria (size, hardiness, bloom time, color, foliage color, etc.)

I'm not defending, just saying: putting this in historical perspective, this pesky issue is exactly the same way it's been for well more than a decade. So if it's a new irritant, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it's due to the formatting changes that caused you to look at that section with fresh eyes :-).

That said, let's see what we can do within the parameters of the database's structure. I don't know if this is possible, or how quickly we could make the change, but what if "Foliage" was something like "Foliage - green unless noted otherwise". Before I propose the idea to the techs, I'll pitch it out here to the community for discussion and input.

Thank you, I have seen other members mention this issue on other threads...I didn't know if it was me or DG.

Thanks Terry. I appreciate your response, but I wasn't suggesting we see several enlarged pics at once.

In theory scrolling five at a time should work, but I find that sometimes it doesn't work correctly. It's definitely better than it was right after PlantFiles was changed, but sometimes it still gets "glitchy" (is that even a word?) :o)

I just now tried the five at a time on my desktop and I will admit it worked quickly and smoothly. But it can get frustrating when it doesn't. If it were to keep working like it just did that would be great. I guess in time we'll know.

Yes, thank you. I do see it now so it is good to know PFs is able to do it correctly and knows the correct form! How odd then on the main page of the plant entries, it is done incorrectly. Now just fix it on the main page of the plant entries where it matters most and we will be all set on at least the names! http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/33208/

This brings up how odd it is to have 2 pages for each entry. Did we used to have 2 pages for every 1 plant entry? I do not remember that.
page 1 - http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/277101/
page 2 - http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/33208/

I wonder how many people do not realize you have to click on the common name on the first page to get to the main page of information and stop there never realizing there is another page which has the most information.

Also now that I look, I wonder why PFs makes the so called common name so much more prominent than the real name. This is even more of an oddity given many of the plant entries have no common name, but the person initiating the entry is told to fill in the genus name if no common name. So then you have the genus followed by the cultivar name but no specie name. LOL. Why not just have the correct name be prominent and if there are common names, have them below?

Oh dear, is that another glitch that your comment to me did not make it into the quote box for some reason? I see it has [/quote] after your comment so the system knew it was part of the quote. Your comment -
Kell, see my screenshot. Beneath the image - do you see the plant's name?[/quote]

Or did I do something wrong?

PS
Nutsaboutnature. I agree with you, I hate not being able to see all the photos at once anymore. I am not sure if this is still a problem, but I hated it even more when I would click thru all the photos looking for what I wanted to see and the click arrow would move up and down depending on the photo size and its orientation, forcing me to look at the arrow to know where it was so I could move my curser to hit it. It slowed up my quest to get thru them all as quickly as possible.

However, it is my understanding that we must live with it because it makes the PFs readable on smaller devices.

At one point I pointed out that YELP seemed to go thru similar changes perhaps for the same reason but figured out how to keep the page of all the photos and I might add big photos. I believe YELP also at that point moved the photo entry comments to be part of the photos just like PFs did which crops the photo inadvertently. Then they moved the comments to the side of the photos with the ID info of the photographer.

I wish we would steal their tech know how and page format! LOL

This message was edited Feb 2, 2016 9:15 AM

Beginning of my new response -
I think the quote boxes are broken. My old post is not really differentiated from your response post since it is out of the box. Now it should really get confusing on whom is speaking with my response to your response to my statement; 3rd generation. LOL But I will give it a try.

I was going to wait to respond RE: the green color check box because this is getting comical! LOL So much ado about such a small change and so much resistance to just adding a small check box.

Why not just add the little check box next to green if you are willing to add "Foliage - green unless noted otherwise"? LOL It takes up the same, actually less room. I do not get the big deal.

Are you saying adding this check box with green as an option would then make it impossible for people to search using all the different characteristics or other colors? I would think, not having it, makes it impossible to search if you want to use green foliage as a characteristic in your search. Maybe there are people who just want green foliage plants!

LOL

Anyway. The reason "Foliage - green unless noted otherwise" would not work is because it would not always be true. There would be times when the person filling in the details, would have no clue what color the foliage was and not check anything off. So the color would not be noted but also might not be green.

Why not just put the color green and a little check box next to it and then there would be no ambiguities?

Or do not change it. LOL I think at this point your resistance to adding the color green to the options of the colors of foliage far out does my irritation that most plant entries show the color of the foliage as "unknown - tell us." Even though it clearly does not want us to tell it and in fact the color is not unknown but GREEN!!!. LOL I guess I say UNCLE!.

Thanks- the 5-at-a-time scrolling does help, I wonder how many newbies will never find that pale grey arrow. I had not noticed it.
So I just did what you said, I searched Agapanthus, a genus with many species as well as cultivars.

Searching ordered by genus starts with:
Lily of the Nile 'Jack's Blue'
Drooping Agapanthus ssp. pendula
Agapanthus Liliy of the Nile "Two Times Blue" A. praecox
Lily of the Nile African Lily 'Cold Hardy White'


Search results ordered by Species starts with:
Lily of the Nile 'Jack's Blue'
Lily of the Nile African Lily 'Cold Hardy White'
Dwarf Blue Lily of the Nile "Improved Peter Pan'
Lily of the Nile 'Dr. Brauwer"

Ordering by 'Cultivar':
Agapanthus Liliy of the Nile "Two Times Blue" A. praecox
Drooping Agapanthus (the species)
Lily of the Nile A. orientalis
Codd's Agapanthus A. coddii
Lily of the Nile A. praecox
Bell Agapanthus A campanulata

None of these seem ordered in any useful way to me. It seems sort of random, not alphabetical by species or the common names either.

Okay I see what you're saying - thanks!

To be honest, the sort-by whether genus, species or cultivar has always had some hiccups. But obviously that isn't working properly at all and this is a great example to use. I'll file the report and keep you guys posted on the status.

Well, from a more 'useful' point of view, the plant data base is nearly useless to someone like me who knows plants mostly by their latin names and not their common names... perhaps I am in the minority, but most of the plants I know have no common names. There STILL is no choice available, as there was in the old plant files (at least that I can see) where one can look up plants alphabetically by latin name, which seems to me one of the MOST important characteristics of ANY plant data base (at least any of the other ones on the internet.. .why should ours be lacking??). So when one looks up Euphorbias (the genus), an alphabetical list of plants appear... not just some randomized list (at least it sure seems random)... makes finding a plant nearly impossible, or at least extremely cumbersome and time consuming.

And if one can't spell the latin name exactly, you simply can't find it on Daves garden anymore... which is another very important thing missing from this data base that the old plantlist had- some program built in so that if you are looking for a plant but don't recall it's exact spelling, it will offer suggestions that are at least close. Used to be so easy.. now we literally have to go off site and have google respell our searches for us, and then we can be back to Davesgarden and try again... anything that keeps sending us away from Davesgarden can't be a good thing... it all should be able to be done here.

And having green as a leaf choice is silly... but not 'kinds of green'... so many plants vary by being dark green, light green, sea green, lime green, forest green, bright green, metallic green, etc. Not everyone knows their greens, but far more people do, so kind of green seems like an essential color choice to add in.

We are looking at auto fill-in and other "fuzzy logic" options to help with spelling. But yes, you absolutely can look up a plant by all or part of its botanical/latin name, with either the general search (located just beneath the images at the top of the main PlantFiles page
or the advanced search - the link to it is located in the shaded box to the right or here: http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/advanced.php

Are boolean operators allowed, when searching?

Eggs_Zachtly, we've discussed implementing exact phrases encases in double quotes. That would probably be the most helpful (most used and most widely understood) to the community.

Hi Terry,

I'm not Eggs_Zachtly, but "exact phrases" has nothing near the capability of a Boolean operator search. Most "serious" search engines support Boolean operators. I think most of the members of the Dave's Garden community do understand the meaning of the words "and" and "or" and "not". They are just words, and not "rocket science".

We attempted introducing Boolean logic in our search years ago, and let's just say it was a bit of a dud...it was not well understood, received or adopted, so it got pulled.

I agree that the vast majority - if not all - of us understand the basic meaning of the words "and" "or" and "not" but we found not that many people are familiar with how to use Boolean operators in their searches. And most of the popular search engines have compensated for that by introducing more intuitive and user-friendly interfaces, so even fewer of us now use and/or or +/- these days.

Haha I use and/or and +/- all the time. I'm wondering why it was "pulled". It should be there if one wants to use it, and it can also be there and not be used. Using it isn't mandatory, but it really helps to narrow down searches. There have been many times I've searched for a specific cultivar, and came up empty. But, that cultivar would be the first hit if I searched for the genus (or even the species' common name). (Tiarella 'Sugar and Spice' comes immediately to mind - took me a few tries to find it lol)

Totally understand and that's why we're looking into bringing back the (mostly useful but not 100% reliable) fuzzy logic we had, or using an auto-fill in to help with those pesky spelling and formatting issues that plague cultivar names: is it 'Sugar 'n Spice? 'Sugar AND Spice'? 'Sugar & Spice'? or 'Sugar 'n' Spice' ???

Hi Terry,
The simple Boolean Sugar AND Spice would cover all of those possibilities. Google uses a whitespace to denote a Boolean AND, so the Boolean expression "Sugar Spice" would get all of the possibilities you list. Fuzzy logic is a questionable and unpredictable alternative to actual logic. Logic = no surprises. Fuzzy logic = surprises. Logic = simple. Fuzzy logic = complex.

Lots of luck for your "bringing back the (mostly useful but not 100% reliable) fuzzy logic we had..." I think you will need the luck, and a lot of work as well.

See this link on How to Search using Boolean Logic.

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_To_Search/Boolean_Logic

Methinks Zen_Man needs a competing site to show everyone how it's done.