Status of PlantFiles issues

I think this is said jokingly, but I like this idea-maybe DG could give ZM a free year if he would host a "how-to" chat forum. We could have threads on how to ID a plant, and how to search on DG or the internet for a plant. How to find an old thread, or something someone said once upon a time in DG. Of course, VV would have to appear in a cameo of "How to ask what is this plant?"

I'm not sure if the foliage color means so much as the overall shape of the plant. I would like a thumbnail (I can enlarge it) of the whole plant that shows the actual way it grows. i.e. draping, straight up, hanging, etc. Maybe just prior to that would be the height and width of the mature plant. So you know how it would look in the spot you want to plant it. By enlarging it, you should be able to tell if the blossoms look up, hang, grow horizontal, size compared to the plant, single, clusters, etc.

I haven't used DG much over the winter, and now coming back to these changes I find PlantFiles almost unusable. That really bothers me as PlantFiles is one of the main features that keeps me subscribing to Dave's Garden. These issues really need to be fixed - or if you can't fix them, please just put things back the way they were!

When I open PlantFiles now, the alphabetical list of categories (cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, etc.) is GONE and searching for them produces nothing. If I happen to be looking for something in one of about two veggie categories that are "popular" (tomatoes and peppers), then there's a thumbnail and I can click on it and go there. For everything else in categories that aren't so "popular" (ex. cucumbers) there's no way in the world to get to them that I can find.

Once in a category, like tomatoes, the search feature doesn't work to locate a plant variety and the alphabet line no longer appears, so if I'm looking for Big Boy I can no longer click on "B" and start scrolling and I can't access it by searching either. Further, even if I am lucky enough to get this far by looking in a "popular" category, then it seems only the first 25 pages of plant varieties (in no logical order however you specify they be listed) are reachable at all so the other pages beyond that just can't be accessed no matter what you do.

Here's how bad it is. When I can muster the patience to even look at PlantFiles, I have taken to exiting Dave's Garden entirely while staying signed in. Then I do a Yahoo or Google search for the plant variety I'm interested in (ex. Big Boy Tomato). Scrolling then through the pages of resulting hits from the entire Internet, which are mostly seed company offerings, SOMETIMES one of the Yahoo or Google hits will be the PlantFiles page for that variety in Dave's Garden. When that happens, I can click on that hit and then I'm in.

How pitiful is that, why has this fine informational resource been ruined, and what the heck is going on here, please?

Ozark, hang with us until the new format has a chance to grow on you. When you see the section for "Popular Plants" look for the pulldown list of "More Plants" next to it - that's where you can select cucumbers or other plants (same list as before, it's now in a pulldown, which is arguably easier for those on a mobile platform with a smaller screen.)

Now let's say you're searching through tomatoes for 'Better Boy' - the tomatoes are sorted according to their reviews. (BTW, this isn't new - the old format had a very similar initial sorting criteria.)

Click on that pulldown to sort by cultivar. 'Better Boy' is on page 18: http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/finder/index.php?sname=Tomatoes&skip=&skip=&skip=&skip=&skip=&page=18&s=C&skip=&list=list

I will grant you that scrolling through the pages can get tiresome, but IF you know what you're looking for, I'd recommend using a search, not a browse function. Does that make sense?

Thanks, Terry - that addresses most of my problems. By using "more plants" to get into the categories, then "skip to" at the bottom of the pages to find the alphabet and access more than the first 25 pages, I can get around.

I use a desktop instead of a mobile device, so the new format is very tedious compared to the old, but I can live with it. Kind of drives me crazy that you mostly "do things" at the bottom of the new pages, but as soon as you do it kicks you to the top of the page or multi-page thread and then you have to get back to where you were. Anyway, I can access all of PlantFiles now, so thanks again.

Did I mention that I liked the old format a heckuva lot better? :>)

I hear you! We are going to continue to refine and tweak this format, and I'm hoping we can move some things up "above the fold" (meaning you don't have to scroll down to get to them.) Not everything can be front/center, but there are some things that can be shuffled to be easier for experienced users to navigate around, while still being user-friendly for first-time visitors.

For the life of me I do not understand what the issue is about how the plant is listed in the PFs. What is wrong with just using the common name first? All PF users are not horticulturists. I would be willing to bet that the most $ are spent by the "common" gardener. And probably using the PFs.

The biggest/best reason to not order by common name is that similar plants are not listed together.

Order/list by scientific name gives you all the related plants - no matter what common name is attached to it.

Jnette, if you are referring to my complaint, it is not that the common names are listed that bothers me for that is great. We need the common names! It is that the common name is listed with the cultivar name, which is not the correct way. It should be the genus then the species then the cultivar.

It would not even matter if PFs kept the cultivar name after the common name (though I have never seen it done that way anywhere else) as long as they listed the plant names the correct way also. There is 1 correct way and then wrong ways. If PlantFiles is supposed to be this great plant resource, getting the names right is just basic



This message was edited Feb 20, 2016 10:17 PM

I notice Facebook now has a blackened strip across the bottoms of the photos posted where the photo is identified and options given to tag or like etc. The great thing about how they do it, is that instead of cropping the bottom of the photo indiscriminately, an onlooker can just move their cursor down over the blackened strip and it disappears allowing the onlooker to see the entire photo.

In PlantFiles, the new redo is so annoying in that it effectively and indiscriminately crops all the photos if the poster writes a comment about their photo. If this new way is a must, why can't it be done better, less intrusively?

Why can't we copy from the bigger sites who have figured out better ways to do these things? So many of the "new" features here have been done so much better on other sites.

Example
There is a rattlesnake curled up beneath this cactus which I think makes the photo more interesting. But you would never know it by how the comment crops it.
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/397659/

Here it is on Facebook where with just a quick downward motion of your cursor allows you too see the entire photo.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10207179935033414&set=pb.1133971213.-2207520000.1456161980.&type=3&theater

Another nice feature of Facebook (and Twitter too), is that there is a smaller photo you see first but if you want to see more detail, you just click on the photo and up it comes HUGE!!! I love it!!! You really can see the plant in detail. On PlantFiles with the new improved redo, it seems all the photos now are so much smaller. Some too small to even see the plant's detail.

This message was edited Feb 22, 2016 11:40 AM

Here is another odd thing. I am looking up Ceanothus verrucosus on Google to find the entry on DG PlantFiles to add a photo. Up comes Family: Rhamnaceae, Genus: Ceanothus - Dave's Garden

I think great and click on it. Up comes 4 pages of entries of Ceanothus. I have no clue how they are ordered, no sense to it. Why not alphabetically so I can find the one I am looking for easily?

Oddly, there is a "sort by" drop down menu that lists common names and cultivar names as a way to sort them and it does list those alphabetically.

The other ways to sort them is a bit odd. By Family, but they all have the same family name. The Family sort by list and the Genus (all the same genus too) sort by list seems to be the exact same list. Species (or Cultivar name) is what I would use most but that is not done with any rhyme or reason that I can tell. I have to look at every entry till I find the one I want.

I can see where a drop down menu with bloom color, height, etc.might be helpful.
And a little box to actually type in the species or cultivar to search within the Ceanothus list would be nice too. I see there is a "Search Dave's Garden" box but that only works on occasion for me and always gives multiple results many wrong.

https://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/b/Rhamnaceae/Ceanothus/none/common/80/#


This message was edited Feb 22, 2016 7:43 PM

This is a small thing but why not get it right? I have noticed that when I enter a new plant to PlantFilest there is now a place at the bottom of the page that says "» Manage synonym names" which was a fantastic addition! I so like it!!!

However when I click on it to add a synonym, I can add only a different genus or different species name. No cultivar box. Now there is an easy way around this by just entering both the species name with the cultivar name in the species box and it comes up correctly.

Instead of adding a 3rd box, a cultivar box, why not make it easier by just having 1 box not 3 where you can type in the whole synonym name at once.

Gee, I wonder if there was just one box to put the genus, specie and cultivar names altogether for the main entry also instead of all the separate boxes, we could actually have the names written on top of the entries be correct; listed with the genus specie and cultivar all together instead of having the cultivar name put after the common name incorrectly with the genus and specie listed below without the cultivar name.

Would make it much quicker for those of us who copy and paste the names too instead of typing them out ourselves.
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/addsyn.php?pid=149269

The synonym fields are for botanical synonyms only. There is an "aka" text field for additional cultivar names, as well as patent info.

Having one field for genus, species (aka specific epithet, binomial) and cultivar in one box would make it nearly impossible for the system to check for duplicates. Let's say you enter Astilbe 'Rheinland' as Astilbe x arendsii 'Rheinland' and it's already in the system as Astilbe japonica 'Rheinland' or Astilbe 'Rheinland' (no species). As it now stands, the system can compare the genus, species, cultivar, and botanical synonym fields independently to (fairly accurately) determine if a plant already exists in PlantFiles. If all those terms were in one field, it would either flag a lot of false duplicates (and hamstring users) or allow all sorts of duplicates (creating more work for editors.)

I understand that entering a plant field-by-field can be a little tedious, but you are creating an entry in a database structure, and that requires we have a more structured input process than copying and pasting a long string of text from elsewhere :-).

Well all I can say, is that I have copied and pasted most of my vast input in PlantFiles and it works well for me.

On another point, when are we going to be able to edit our descriptions to our photos on PlantFiles as we used to before?

I have mentioned this on this forum several times I believe and no one has bothered to comment on it. Again, the reason I am so concerned bordering on being upset, is because it is in my "description" section that I can credit the photographer who actually took the photo that I posted. The photographer was so kind to allow me to share their work on PlantFIles, it seems so wrong not to credit them with it. It also appears that I took the photo as my own which is dishonest!!!!!

The only reason the correct credit is not given on a few of my photos is that for some reason unknown to me, though I typed in the correct credit in the correct spot, it was not posted. I have asked for the correct info to be posted but so far have been ignored.

Today I posted 3 photos to BugFiles and added a description crediting the real photographer. And again, my description was not added to the photo. So once again, it appears that I am stealing another's work.

So many of the photos I have been posting from accomplished photographers and/or professional gardeners are the only photo in an entry or 1 of few. I am so thankful to these people for wanting to share with PlantFiles. It just seems so wrong to treat them like this.

I don know why I
Bother. Went to post update on salvia confertiflora and it deleted the detailed info I had on this rare plant. Now it only shows the word update. Would be nice if you guys could recover what data I had previously but I've pretty much given up on this whole mess...

Kell, are you talking about the photo captions or the gardener's notes you've added to plants? We are aware (and we've put a fairly high priority) on getting the captions editable again. But if the descriptions are also behaving problematically, that's something I am not aware of, so please let me know.

Sorry for posting this here, but there seems to be an issue with threads suddenly popping up on homepages with odd dates and times. I've tried posting on the "Status of Updates" thread twice, but it seems to be one of the broken threads.

I'm trying this thread because apparently some threads are working.

Here is a screen shot from a little while ago of my home page.

The times seem to continually change to current time and one of the threads hasn't had any activity in over a month.

I know it's not just me because I came across a post regarding this issue from Chillybean in the Bird Watching forum and I was able to respond in that thread. The link to that thread follows.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1417292/

And - that part of the problem is solved. We await the rest of the fix, but at least posts are in the correct order again.

I am talking about the descriptions you can enter when you post a photo. It says "Please give a short (20 words or less) description of this picture:" I use this often to give photo credit and location of plant.

There are times for some unknown reason where the description I have typed in does not show up. Often I do not check the photo after posted because when I am spending so much of my time uploading photos to PlantFiles, I want to make it as fast as possible. So often I am not even aware when the system has a glitch and does not post it but find it later when I come across a photo I posted that I know is not mine but no credit is given.

However there are times I do catch it at the time and ask that it be corrected and I supply the correct info. Here is an example. http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/395762/
Mon, December 28, 2015
08:53 AM I asked Admin to add the correct credit.
The info that needed to be added:
Please add
Jardín Botánico Canario Viera y Clavijo, Spain. Photo courtesy of Karl Gercens. Copyright Karl Gercens. Conservatory Horticulturist at Longwood Gardens. http://www.karlgercens.com/

I know my needs/desires are of little importance in the scheme of things, but I would think that in the more than 3 months that has elapsed someone could have said to me something if only too bad so sad we do not have time! I worry over this not only because my life is so boring but I also feel like I am stealing credit for another's photo. And as time goes by, I will lose track of not only which photos are lacking such info but also what the correct info actually is and who in fact took the photo. Going thru the 15,500 photos I have posted looking would be impossible!

I also often ask that synonyms be added to a PlantFile entry that I have not entered myself so I have no access to. I take my time to do this not only to make PFs more accurate but also in the hopes that having the correct list of synonyms will help make searches actually be successful. I cannot tell you how often I search for a particular plant entry on PFs to add a photo 5 different ways with no success only to add all the info on a plant to make a new plant addition, only to be told once all that work is done that that plant entry actually is already in the system.

Looking back at some of my many requests for this, I see they were never done. None of my requests were even responded to. Not even a please stop bothering us and wasting your time and ours.

It is just frustrating, upsetting and actually hurtful to constantly feel you are being ignored here.

Now, I realize today Dave's Garden is yet again in the midst of a crisis with nothing much working and as far as I can see Admin has gone missing, but in all honesty when in the last so many months has this not been the case just in varying degrees of a mess? Maybe when things have calmed down, my concerns will be addressed.

Is it ok to post something regarding the Bug/BirdFiles? If not, then please tell me where to post this. Also, I wanted to get this asked before I forget again. It's usually when I run into this another time that I finally thought... say something. :)

Here is an example of an image just uploaded to the bird files.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1417717/
Nice image, but if I want to go to the main File page of that bird, I cannot. If my remembers are working properly, I thought there used to be a link on the comment page to go there.

Here is an example of a PlantFile image on its discussion page... a link is right there.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1405765/

Can this be fixed at some point?
Thank you.

Kell, what you are referring to is the photo caption. We have it teed up on the list of upcoming fixes.

Your requests for synonyms...that's odd. We have had some behind-the-scenes issues with PF edit requests being misrouted to the main help desk, but I haven't seen them there...but now that you've mentioned them, I will do some in-depth searching to see if I can track them down and get them resolved.

Obviously Terry, my feelings have been hurt here. Even if I were nuts, an "I am sorry" by the face of Dave's Garden would be nice. After all, all I have been doing is adding to PlantFiles in a huge way for no kind of compensation. I do not even get a Thanks!

Moving on to reporting the multiple glitches in the new and improved PlantFiles. I often get a weird 404 Error message that tells me that though I have been thwarted by some weird glitch, I can make lemonade out of this lemon for I have found Dave's Garden. Yes, I did in 2002 with no glitches involved.

Example. In my search for the plant entry for Ariocarpus fissuratus lloydii I came across this page http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/451588/#b
When I click on the name link, hoping to get to the main entry, up comes the error page which is captured in my second photo. I run into this error page a lot in different circumstances all involved in searching for different plant entries.

Another error I see all the time now that we have to click thru all the photos under 1 entry to see ones we want to see up close and personal, is the credits at the top often are out of sync. I noticed this when my name would appear over a photo that was not mine. If I went back and clicked thru much slower, it would be corrected. But no way am I slowing my click thru since I resent having to do it in the first place. The old way was just so much better for lots of reasons.
Example
1st photo shows photo of an Agave helenae which to my surprise credits me taking it. It is not my photo. On a slower click thru, PalmBob is revealed to be the true photographer. The dates change too. It is odd too in that though I did post a photo of this agave on that date and time, it does not come just before or after PlamBob's.

Ditto

Bump due to time stamp issues

This message was edited Mar 11, 2016 12:19 AM

Bump dur to time stamp issues

Bump due to time stamp issues

Another glitch that was just revealed to me so not sure when it started.
I tried to add a "Gardeners' Note" to an new plant entry that I had just entered. I completed the form with my note. Photo 1.

Then hit preview and up came a page devoid of my comment. Photo 2

So I retried 2 more times to no avail. But decided to click post just to see if might post my comment. But no, it didn't! My info is posted but no note. Photo 3.

Then after I tried on another plant entry to add a note and GEEZ, the place where I think I used to be able to leave a "gardeners' note" is totally gone! LOL I tried other pages, no longer anywhere!!! Photo 4

I ran into something interesting. I uploaded two images to the PlantFiles and on my homepage these show up as pending.

Later, I went to a page for that plant, but was not logged in when I noticed my two images on there. I thought they were accepted, so clicked on one to make sure my caption attached. Instead went to a blank page with this notice:Can't find image number 399865
Image not found.

I double checked I was not logged in, thinking they would show if I were. Then I went so far as to remove the cookies if there was something embedded in that, went back to the plant file, and the images still showed up among the rest.

Has it always been this way that the thumbnails attach to the plant files even though they are still in a state of "pending"? I have not uploaded many here.

I've attached two screenshots "grabbed" within a minute of each other at around 2:30 my time. And this is the link for the page where I see the thumbnails of my pending images.
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/30189/
The main page for this plant does not show my images.

Editing to say: I just noticed the link I gave does not match the image I got a screenshot for earlier. So it seems the thumbnails only show up on individual image pages rather than on the main File page for this plant.


This message was edited Mar 16, 2016 5:39 PM

Why is there a 25 page limit to the results in plantfiles? And how do I get around it. Plantfiles was easy to use.
The new format (for mobile users) looks to me to be a way to add advertisements to every page. I NEVER buy from ads on website pages. They are a huge distraction from what is important, in this case browsing plant data. I guess the bottom line is so much more important to the owners of DG than the long time users. Too bad for them.

Since you are a paying member I think you can control your ads. Click on preferences and go from there.

I'm on an iPad and a desk top and I have not found the new DG to be user friendly on either on.

Thanks 1lisac. I had one check mark under ad settings which I unchecked. It was for Top Watchdog ads. What I was seeing looked like general all ads to me. Unchecking it did remove ads. So I guess all ads are Top Watchdog ones.

I don't know....but Im glad it worked.

Another issue...

I was trying to re-identify some emerging plants so I was searching the Latin names I have on my known list. One of the pages that came up was for this site except a cultivar. So I clicked on the species name and all that came up was a blank white page with this link:
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/b/Asteraceae/Rudbeckia/fulgida/cultivar/0/

I thought it was a matter of not being logged in, so I did that, then tried clicking the species name again, only to run into the same blank page.

Chilly, I've run into various blank pages and error notices all over the site. While looking for an article yesterday most of the links I tried either gave me error notices or (for some reason) shot me over to the main forums page.

I don't know if you received an answer to this yet, but I think it relates to a feature request that I made at least a couple of years ago. I have categories in my Journal for birds, bugs and butterflies as well as plants. It would be nice to have the link (the same as for plants) to the specific item in BirdFiles or BugFiles, rather than having to add the Files link to the initial comments or as a separate entry as I'm doing now. Apparently those "Files" aren't set up to do that, though I don't see why it couldn't be done.

Thanks for commenting, SallieKr. No admin had addressed this, nor the issue following. Blank pages would be something I think they'd want to take care of.

Today I ran into an issue regarding the Files that I thought someone brought up before but for the life of me I cannot find it now. I didn't want to type it all up if I could have linked to it. :)

Currently, the bird highlighted on the sidebar is the Blue Jay and the thumbnail shows baby birds. Cute. I click on the image, but it doesn't go to that image, but rather the first one. I click on that arrow quite a few times to finally find that thumbnail. Then when I click on it, the page reloads to show the image I want to see, but crazily, the long line of thumbnails goes back to the beginning! I understand we are not ever going to see all thumbs at once, but this seems cumbersome.

I went to a plant file page to test this, and though the whole page reloaded and bounced (not sure how to explain that, but it was not a smooth reloading), the thumbnails did not go back to the beginning.



This message was edited Apr 27, 2016 7:41 AM

The issue with the thumbnails and the page "bouncing" (I've noticed it too... very irritating) is due to poorly written code. An example of how it *should* work is here:

https://weather.com/travel/news/underwater-sculptures-for-marine-life

To get to the plant file page I want to get to, I've been either using my history or an external search engine for the most part. I tried searching yesterday with the main DG search. I got a listing of articles, plant files, etc. When I wanted to see "more results" of the Plant files, it took me to the main Plant File page that did not have any search results. This was the link:
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/?q=tradescantia
I had the DG and googleapis scripts enabled, so if this is something on my end, could someone please help me figure this out?

Another issue I found when scrolling through the above page is seeing one of my reviews with a cultivar of Prairie Spiderwort. The screenshot shows this. I do not have any plant named "Madison" and when clicking on that link to see my review, it takes me to a page that has no cultivar name. I am hoping to add some photos from this season, but I do not want to put it with the wrong plant. Is this an issue with the plant file page itself, or merely how it is displayed in the recent plant reviews?

I got the same results searching for tradescantia... more results leading to nothing. Even weirder, when I tried PF advanced search for genus tradescantia cultivar madison, there were no results. Searching for only cultivar madison had a bunch of results, none of which even resembled spiderwort.

Off-topic, I guess, but my favorite is "Osprey". It relocated to the middle of my pathway. It's in the way, but I'm afraid of moving it as I haven't found it for sale locally since the first year I planted it and it's the only one left... the purple and blue varieties have spread all over.