Re: Checked records
We have been getting a bit annoyed with the ease of unchecking taxon occurrences.
Correct me if I am wrong, but my interpretation of the check-box which appears by each occurrence, is to allow for someone to check that the occurrence has been entered correctly and to facilitate the exclusion of records which have not been checked from reports etc. This is a sensible and useful facility and the fact that it can be done by someone with relatively low-level access and without the need to put the occurrence in edit mode is also sensible.
Our problem however is that it is equally easy to uncheck the occurrence, thus excluding it from reports. We just found about 50 occurrences scattered through our dataset which have been unchecked inadvertently, probably by inexperienced users not understanding what the checkbox is for.
Once a record has been checked, why would one ever wish to uncheck it? There may be rare occasions when one needs to do so, but if this happens, surely it should require the occurrence to be in edit mode, or should at least say "are you sure you want to uncheck this?" Furthermore, when an occurrence is unchecked (or checked?), this should be recorded in the DATE_CHANGED and CHANGED_BY fields, so we can track down who it is who is inadvertently unchecking our data.
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre