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Topic: Atlas Species page displays incorrect image

Looking at the Atlas page for Bombus sylvestris, the displayed image is incorrect - cuckoo bumblebees NEVER collect pollen - the image is of a Bombus pratorum worker.

I assume the incorrect image is there because of some sort of Atlas webcrawler bot wandering off and returning with an incorrectly name image "from the internet".  Surely it would be much easier to actually take a bit of time add links from the Atlas to images of the correct species provided by the National Recording Scheme for this bee on their own website?

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Re: Atlas Species page displays incorrect image

That one's from a marine dataset!
Some of these links are terrible. Many of them use EoL which is notorious for bad information, entire Families incorrectly described.

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Re: Atlas Species page displays incorrect image

I'm not sure how the photo got there.  Looking at some of the hyperlinks associated with some of the information on the various species pages I assumed it was a web-crawler bot.  However, looking at another species page without images I found this rather worrying message - "If you have images for this taxon that you would like to share with NBN Atlas, please upload using the upload tools.".

Does this mean than anybody can upload any image they wish to any species page?  I hope not.  We have already seen a lot of discussion about unverified data being uploaded and mapped on the Atlas, please tell me we are not going to have unverified photos being uploaded as well.

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Re: Atlas Species page displays incorrect image

It looks like those images have been bulk uploaded - I seem to recall they appeared very early on in the Atlas development (Atlas of Living Scotland?). At least it doesn't seem obvious from David Fenwicks (who took the image) website how they could have been automatically crawled.

I note when clicking on the image you get a  "if the is image is incorrectly identified please flag it on the record", but there doesn't seem to be any method for doing this that I can see.

(David won the NBNs "David Robertson adult award" in 2015)

Charlie Barnes
Information Officer
Greater Lincolnshire Nature Partnership

5 (edited by Matt Smith 06-06-2017 17:29:13)

Re: Atlas Species page displays incorrect image

I get as far as "contact the curator" when going to the record and clicking on the image, but cannot do any more than this.  Presumeably this facility  - comment on a record - is still waiting to being implemented.

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Re: Atlas Species page displays incorrect image

Many thanks for raising this, we will look into it and come back to you once we know more.

Kind Regards

Sarah

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Re: Atlas Species page displays incorrect image

Most of the images have come from EoL http://www.eol.org/ and we have had some direct links to large databases of images from experienced recorders in the UK.  We are continuing to source images from our Network and hope that the image library will grow over time. Please do continue to flag incorrect images with us so we can look into how the issue arose. The facility to upload an image is disabled at the moment. The idea was that you could attach an image when you uploaded a record directly, but, because of data flow and verification issues, we are not supporting the facility to upload records directly to the Atlas just yet.

We will take on board your feedback and rectify these as soon as we are able.

Many thanks

Sarah

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Re: Atlas Species page displays incorrect image

Currently, the only way to flag incorrect images seems to be via this forum.  Will there be a method for doing so within the atlas?

Again, I would suggest that the Atlas does not allow "user uploaded images".  Speak to the various recording schemes and link through to their existing species accounts pages, that way you will get correctly identified images and some text information that actually is relevant, most of what seems to be being brought back from EoL is either complete rubbish or talking about non-UK species.

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Re: Atlas Species page displays incorrect image

When the NBN Atlas Scotland was first launched, feedback via the Forum expressed concern over the often inappropriate and irrelevant nature of the species descriptive text. This may not be a priority, but some of us would rather see the link to EOL discontinued and would rather have no text than irrelevant text of doubtful quality.

I don't think I was alone in being dismayed to find the description of an iconic Scottish species, the Golden Eagle, making comparisons with the Blad Eagle and discussing the populations in North America.