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Re: You can save your matches to a temporary database using the Commit....

Well after 3 days of importing on one small file and jumping through many hoops it looked like I had to restart Recorder to continue. I cancelled the the import believing that the matches I made would be remembered. THEY WERE NOT.

When I get to the match species page of the import process all entries are EMPTY. I checked the appropriate table in the database and indeed it is populated. I guess that the 'remembered' in this instance means forgotten.

Ahh not so I hear you say, well actually pretty well YES. If I do a search using my primary source dictionary from the first time around it then Identifies those which I found manually [yes including the ones it should have found automatically but could not be bothered too] it does indeed mark those I manually had to find BUT only from that dictionary.

The implication is that I should have made a precise note of all the dictionaries [I still think an Otter is an Otter which ever dictionary is in R6] I used the first time around and go through them one at a time.

So this to me is NOT remembering. Why does it tell me it will remember then?

I wonder can I create the tony_price dictionary and put all the names in it? Then all this silliness will go away. I say silliness as when I get a record it does not tell me what source/checklist/R6 dictionary was used to identify the species, so why do I need to falsely say which was probably not the one used. It seems to take up a lot of time to place it against some checklist that might have been used thereby falsely attributing information about taxa.

Data Manger
Somerset Environmental Records Centre

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Re: You can save your matches to a temporary database using the Commit....

What happens if you do a seach against 'all preferred lists' right at the top of the drop-down list of dictionaries?

Charles Roper
Digital Development Manager | Field Studies Council
http://www.field-studies-council.org | https://twitter.com/charlesroper | https://twitter.com/fsc_digital

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Re: You can save your matches to a temporary database using the Commit....

Thanks Charles, I did that, unfortunately that did not find all the entries from the preferred lists. I found searching them independently did work. The problem with that solution of course is did it make the decisions I made first time around or quite different ones. I don't suppose I'll ever know and why did it not remember in the first place. After 8 hours of selecting species one at a time not to have them remembered undermines ones confidence; something I'm getting all too familiar with.

Data Manger
Somerset Environmental Records Centre

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Re: You can save your matches to a temporary database using the Commit....

I think you populate the species with 'remembered' ones only when you search - I don't think it happens automatically. I am very hazy on this though (and I've just done an import). Certainly, when I search using 'all preferred lists' it fails to match a lot of species and I can only find matches by choosing an individual list and searching on that.

This problem has always existed with the import wizard. I still don't understand this behaviour. If I search on 'all preferred lists' I expect it to find the preferred taxa found in those lists. For example, I've just imported a load of Lepidoptera data. On doing an 'all preferred lists' search, many of the species did not match. So I switched to the LEPIDOPTERA list, did a search, and most of the species were found (bar two, which were aggregates). The question is, why did it not find these taxa on the initial preferred lists search? This has always baffled me and remains a productivity killer when it comes to species matching.

Charles Roper
Digital Development Manager | Field Studies Council
http://www.field-studies-council.org | https://twitter.com/charlesroper | https://twitter.com/fsc_digital

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Re: You can save your matches to a temporary database using the Commit....

Hi Charles

To save me rummaging around, can you let me know a few examples of Lepidoptera species which don't match against the preferred list search option? I just picked a random sample, including latin and common names, and in my case they all matched to the entries in the LEPIDOPTERA list when I searched against All Preferred Lists.

In the latest version of Recorder, there is now a commit matches button so you can save the matches you have made so far. However, Tony is right in that the search operation is only within the current list option - there is no "search anything to find what I did before" feature. This is in theory what the All preferred lists option would give you, as long as it is working reliably. I can't see anything obviously wrong in the code either, so a few examples would be very useful.

By the way, the neccessity to search only within a selected list comes about because of taxon names having multiple meanings. E.g. is a redshank a bird or a plant - depends who you ask, hence the need to pick the list to search, and why any duplicates cannot come back as automatically matched.

John van Breda
Biodiverse IT

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Re: You can save your matches to a temporary database using the Commit....

Thanks Charles and John, I found that people's names were automatically found and if what you say is correct about not automatically finding previously matched items somewhat confusing. To say that the help file is economical with the truth is an understatement as it just says "This will enable you resume the import more quickly as the matches already done will be remembered." it does not elude to any further process and as the names were matched for me in this instance.....

I take your point about common names however [there always seem to be a however, sorry] I'm only dealing with scientific names and find in the R3 dictionary I found species which are unique that did not get automatically matched using search and also the duplicates that I did find were duplicates within the R3 dictionary. This puzzled me as I had to just choose one anyway myself not knowing what if anything was the distinctive difference between them as well as the surprise of finding duplicates in the dictionary.

I will take the small comfort that I'm not the only one finding unexpected behaviour.

Data Manger
Somerset Environmental Records Centre