Message to Staff on incorrect Pics to Grannyvine

I wanted Everybody to see the Exact message that I sent in the report an error message window early this morning regarding the blatantly erroneous pictures of Ipomoea purpurea that have LONG been present under Ipomoea tricolor...that I and others have reported MULTIPLE times with no proper correction to the database
Will threads devoted to correcting specific errors help or always be necessary for those'hard to get corrected' entries...
We will see...


Here is what I sent
On http://davesgarden.com/pf/showimage/1569/ I found an error. The error that I found is:
Dear Poppysue,
I appreciate your contributions as a PlantFiles Administator,but it would add credibilty to both the PlantFiles and your own ability to distinguish the seedpods that you posted here,that are OBVIOUSLY Ipomoea purpurea and OBVIOUSLY NOT Ipomoea tricolor..
Most of the pictures contained in the same basic Grannyvine entry are also those of Ipomoea purpurea...
I have reported this OBVIOUS error MANY times and the OBVIOUS error has been openly discussed in the Vines and climbers forum and recognized by any and all persons familiar with the distinction of the species...
I can only wonder if the fact that the error was entered by a Plant Files Administator is preventing the correction of this error...it remains an ongoing joke on the Vines and Climbers forum with EVERYONE just WONDERING(!) why(!) the errors in this 'Grannyvine' section have been allowed to remain uncorrected for SOOO(!) long...
I will be copying and pasting this to the Vines and Climbers forum as the start of a New thread
It is with REGRET that I apparently have no choice but to 'PUSH' this issue
Hoping for long overdue corrections that have reported multiple times by several members to receive proper attention
Regards,
Ron_Convolvulaceae

It is with regret that I am forced to play 'The Heavy',but sometimes that is what it takes and this one is a good example...

P.S. here is the link to the main entry
http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/751/index.html

This message was edited Sep 22, 2005 8:30 AM

This message was edited Sep 22, 2005 8:54 AM

Yes, things like this should definitly be corrected.

Disinformation is worse than no information.

Would it be helpful if we all sent messages to the staff reaffirming your (and our)recognition of this error? Or maybe we could just post on this thread something like "ditto" to keep it near the top of the vines forum.

Patience is appreciated. Sarcasm and belittling is most definitely not.

For the record, no one has intentionally ignored this issue.

The fact of the matter is Ron didn't report this issue until yesterday morning. Looking at the entry itself, I see back in January he submitted a comment about the questionable species. To be perfectly frank, we don't read every new comment that is submitted for each plant, so if you report an error via a comment, it's likely to go unnoticed and uncorrected. Ditto for comments posted in this forum - it's a discussion forum, not an error-reporting forum.

We do read our helpdesk messages, and do our best to respond to those.

As of right now, we have 19 error reports submitted by Ron, all but two submitted in the last 20 days, 12 of which were submitted yesterday. (In the interest of full disclosure, I will acknowledge there may be others he submitted while not logged in - my search was limited to his username as that was the quickest way to find this report.)

I don't think it's unreasonable for us to be working on a backlog basis of a few weeks. Our editors are volunteers, and have real gardens and jobs to tend to. They volunteer their time to answer questions and research errors that are reported.

Prudence dictates that one person's assertion of an error - no matter how vigorously it is asserted - is not taken as fact until we've done our homework. So I would ask that you give us the benefit of the doubt when an error report takes a few days or even weeks, and not attempt public embarrassment as a tactic for getting our attention. It may be effective in the short term, but it's certainly not efficient, assuming your goal is the same as ours, which is to correct errors in a timely manner.

Terry - I resorted to posting this particular error,becuause I have reported this particular error several times since I have been a member... and in the Vines and Climbers forum,on some of the threads other members had stated that the same error was reported and no response was ever received...
I sent e-mails to Poppysue before I submitted error reports on this particular entry a long time ago...I don't know what happened to the error reports I had submitted a long time ago...various computer system errors and/or failures could be a real factor...
I want to emphasize the fact that I did report this particular error several times and have discussed this entry both in private e-mails and in the threads...as far as I can recall,all of my entries were entered when I was logged in...

So,my experience differs sharply from whatever records are showing up on the system...

as I stated in my first posting above:
"Hoping for long overdue corrections that have reported multiple times by several members to receive proper attention"

and

"It is with regret that I am forced to play 'The Heavy',but sometimes that is what it takes and this one is a good example..."

I stated my experience of this particular entry and would never have felt that posting the issue to the regular threads was warranted,unless there was a 'problem' with a particular error receiving attention...
Relating the facts as I experienced them...as to whether facts are 'belittleling' or taken personally as 'sarcastic' is a question of perspective...

I absolutely agree with your basic positions on all points that you mentioned,and your statement of mutual goals being
"to correct errors in a timely manner" is the essence here...the time and efforts of the volunteers is a venerable 'vocation',that I supremely admire,but I placed the emphasis where I thought it was needed,in view of my experience of this particular entry,which for reasons unknown,differs from the records that you have cited...and I definitely did think that this particular entry and error reports related to it,were somehow just not working ...

The members who are not staff also volunteer time and effort to the database...and we would all like for the database to be accurate and a group effort that we can all be happy with and proud of...
All of the members,including myself look forward to working with(!) any of the staff members and other volunteers...

Your points are well taken.

But please (PLEASE) don't confuse discussing an error in a thread (even if it's in the PF photo thread accompanying the image) with reporting it as an error.

Dave's Garden receives between 1,500 and 2,000 posts every day. Our PlantFiles users log approx. 1,000 comments to PlantFiles each month, many months we are well over 2,000 comments.

I truly have no idea how many private messages are generated each day among our members, and we definitely don't have any reason to be privy to what is contained in them. (It is the rare request for our assistance that causes us to ever read a message written between members.)

So long story short, there's no way for the (paid) administrators or our volunteer editors to read everything that is written in the forums, comments or d-mails, let alone act on errors that may be discussed through those channels.

That's why we set up the red button-like "report an error" link which you see on every image and entry within PlantFiles. By using that link, you ensure that your comments will be received by PlantFiles editors, and the system will insert a link to the page you're viewing as you report the error, making it easier for us to retrace your steps.

I myself have reported errors many times in the morning glory section of this site, and have yet to see any real changes made in regard to species errors. I do realize this all may take some time, but I've been looking at the same errors for over a year now. Most of the errors are being reported on common species that could be verified just by putting the names into Google and comparing the data. There are also some multiple entries for the same flower by common name, which are in fact the same species. I have a suggestion in mind, if it's taken as a positive thought to fixing the situation: Would it be possible for someone who is very knowledgeable in this genus to be the person who is soley in charge of making sure that the entries are correct, especially if they were to volunteer their time to do so? There are a few in this area on the vines forum that could qualify for this priviledge, easing the load off others that are weighed down with many other plants to sort out, and the errors could be corrected sooner. Just a thought to toss around...

QueenB, I see you've submitted 14 error reports - over half of them are closed; most of the outstanding reports remain unresolved because of this rather thorny issue of species/interspecific hybrids.

The reason the species "errors" have not been corrected is because they aren't quite as cut-and-dried as we would all like them to be. You can go to any number of sources and find the same cultivar listed as belonging to several different species. (The crux of the matter is we're dealing with a group of plants that don't have an international register and official checklist of accepted names.)

Speaking for myself, I generally rely on my AHS and Hortus Third (yes, it's outdated, but many species haven't changed that much since 1976) and on the USDA, ARS/GRIN, and MOBOT when those two books and the rest of my reference library fails me. I think the other editors do pretty much the same, although everyone has their own preferred order in which they go for help.

Yes, it would be nice to have an expert volunteer their time to correct the Ipomoea entries. In fact, that's essentially how we find new PlantFiles editors. If someone would like to volunteer, we'd be happy to talk with you about the responsibilities it entails. One important point to keep in mind is this: even though a volunteer may have a sizeable amount of personal, professional or scientific expertise, their opinion doesn't override the information found in the sources I mentioned above. PlantFiles is not here to try to change the botanical world's collective mind - we tend to follow, rather than lead in that regard. ;o)