Hi Charles,

I agree with you that digital photography is encouraging a lot of new people to go out and observe wildlife, often in minute detail and with fantastic images as a result. And yes, this is a potential source of new data, not only from Flickr, but also on the multiplicity of other photo sites and wildlife forums that are out there. Plus the new ones that are being developed through the OPAL project, including the Biodiversity Observatory that I'm working on with the Open University. So finding a way of linking such images to Indicia, and auto-populating fields as you suggest, would be great.

However, I think there are some areas that need some thought and development, one being how we record the determiner for some of these photos. It's well-known that there are many examples of misidentified species on Flickr and elsewhere, and there are also many examples of species that are probably correctly identified but it's difficult to be sure, and also difficult to know who the "determiner" is when the identification has been arrived at by a group of people during a forum discussion.

What can we do to address this? The Biodiversity Observatory project is looking at various reputation management models as one way of tracking the degree of confidence that can be placed in a determination. And if Indicia can link back to the original source of the photo, and ideally any related forum discussion, then that in itself provides some of the evidence required for the record to be assessed by others. Perhaps we can share/promote good practice for recording how a determination has been arrived at?

Not sure I agree that digi-photography is the "new collecting", there are too many differences between collecting images and collecting specimens (each method has strengths and weaknesses). Entirely do agree that "we should be engaging with this community".

Martin

Hello,

RECORD have been using Flickr for a while now on RODIS (RECORD Online Data Input system). It is used to help users identify what they are putting inputting into the system. So a recorder will type in a certain species and then use the Flickr tool to double check that they have entered the correct record. It also aids the user by helping identify certain species, for example if a recorder is not entirely sure what species they have seen they can use Flickr to check whether they have correctly identified the species.

We are aware though that people misidentify species on Flickr, so it cannot always be relied upon. We also occasionally come across the problem of Flickr photos with species names, so you could type in badger and something entirely unrelated will come up from Flickr images.

Identification is a big problem on Flickr, with the amount of misidentified species, would you want to exploit something that might be incorrect? Or are you looking at exploiting the Flickr accounts of County Recorders and specialists who are not likely to misidentify a species? You want to give your users of the system correct information.

Thanks

Hannah

Hi Charles

Yes, we are with you on that one. The ability to easily link digital images to records will be a key feature of many online recording packages so integrating with Flickr sounds like a great idea. We will certainly try to get some form of integration in the near future so I will add a feature request to the issues list.

Keep 'em coming!

Cheers

John

Yeah, this sounds good and definitely on the right track.

Are you able to push data out to Flickr? For instance, can you point to a local picture (using the browser's file browse control, or potentially a Flash-based control, like Flickr's own) and have that be pushed onto Flickr along with tags and metadata taken from the record? I'm thinking this would save the user the two-step process of uploading to Flickr separately, then entering their record onto Indicia. If you could upload your photos directly from Indicia, that would be a huge plus.