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Topic: ... and some more

Another little stroll through the byways of ALS took me to Tools/AOO EOO. I did not know what on earth this was either, but a click on the help icon takes me to the ALA help facility (not ALS) which tells me that it stands for ‘Area of Occupancy and Extent of Occurrence’.  OK, that’s my new bit of knowledge for the day.

Apply to Scotland, Search for a species (with the usual unfathomable search algorithm), type in ‘Calliphora vicina’ and it is clearly unacceptable – it is underlined in red. Why? Check the box above, ‘Use the scientific names supplied with the records’, and it seems to becomes acceptable. That label is less than explicit – what does it do?; if it is essential, why is it not checked by default? Then dreams of progress are dashed when I click ‘Next’, and the red lines return.  Check the spelling – yup, that is OK. Enter direct from the drop-down list – same result.  Maybe it is because C. vicina is not red-listed, so try Andrena marginata which is Notable A. That provokes the response in the drop-down list ‘Unknown found 3+30 checklist areas’.  Eh? Maybe Notable A is not good enough, so try Formica exsecta. Still can’t get past that form.

To the IT team – please:

1 – note the comment about the search algorithm in the context of previous comments;

2 – sort out the failure in this sequence;

3 – provide some explanation of the ‘Use the scientific names supplied with the records’ checkbox, and reset default state if appropriate;

4 – if the function applies only to IUCN designated species, restrict the list to these;

5 – provide some more explanation for errors - red underlines are not helpful;

6 – do please ask yourselves whether a site in this undeveloped state in the public domain is really an asset to the reputation of NBN;

7 – confirm that these points have been logged for action.

Murdo

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Re: ... and some more

Many thanks for your feedback and comments, which we have noted.