Stats in the PDB

I think a text box to list the stats of the daylily cultivars would be etremely helpful. It would probably help the hostas, irises, and brugs too. I know the check boxes are designed for each but some of the vitals can't be incorporated into check boxes... like hybridizers & years of introduction.... and I think they're pretty important tid bits that should be included in each entry.

In the daylilies, I see members are listing the stats under their photos, under the comments, and not even using the check boxes.

A text box under the cultivar name for registration statistics may not be too hard to incorporate?? Would it? It'd be wonderful to see the stats diplayed right there in each entry under the name.

Anyone else have comments about this??

I've been putting the Hosta stats in as a comment, but I do agree it should be consistant as to where the info is added.

Sue, my gut reaction is that it will be helpful to users if they would use the checkboxes (I understand that hybridizer and year of introduction don't lend themselves to checkboxes :) As PDB editors, we may need to make it a practice to contact those who are placing the information in captions and comments, and encourage them to use the checkboxes, and clean up the existing entries that have stats scattered in various places.

The point of having stats - and by stats, I'm meaning color, markings, ploidy, etc. - is for the registrar to record the plant and be able to differentiate it from every other registered cultivar.

These stats then allow a user to search for a plant that meets their criteria, or to narrow down the list of possible matches in identifying the plant they have.

I know it's common in the daylily world to list the stats as a string of (nearly indecipherable) codes, but I would guess this "standard operating procedure" is used mainly by sellers because they tend to use a simplistic "price list" approach to list their offerings on their websites and catalogs.

If Dave is up to adding one or two free-form text boxes for hybridizer and year introduced, that's fine with me, I say that with some reservations, because I don't know what that does to the database structure to have these fields for some plants and not others - I can see where brugs, hostas, daylilies, roses, hibiscus, dahlias, lilies, waterlilies, orchids and other widely-hybridized plants all share this dilemma :(

An alternative is to parenthetically list the hybridizer and year of introduction next to the cultivar name, as I've been doing with roses.

Other thoughts or ideas?

I'm not really suggesting that we eliminate the check boxes. I know how important they are as far as the searching goes. They aren't really serving their purpose if they don't get used. I was hoping for the text box in addition to the check boxes.

I agree the hybridizer/breeder & introduction year information needs to be included in the entries. And it's logical to have it in a free-form field (pull-down lists would be a huge nuisance, even for year of introduction; for hybridizer names, it would be a nightmare.)

My concerns (outside of any issues Dave may have about adding additional free-form fields) are:

1) A free-form field could become the catch-all for that ubiquitous string of stats, just as the comment box and caption fields are now;
2) Spelling the hybridizer's names will be an editing issue (just as correct spelling of the plant's names is an issue now); and
3) Could the same field(s) be used for all hybridized plants?

If Dave agrees to an additional free-form field(s) (which would probably have to be displayed on all "new plant" entry forms), and we're up to the challenge of keeping up with the editing it will take, I'm willing to give it a shot.

In fact now is a really good time to do it, if we're going to. I have a backlog of rose entries that need to be added. It would be much easier for me to edit them now, and parse out this information before I upload them all.

Summarize this for me: Exactly what are we going to add? Do we want just a single freeform field, or more than one? What will the names of them be? If a single freeform will do, I'd rather do that.

Will this freeform exist for all plants, or just certain genera?

Dave

How about just one field for Hybridizer & Year of Introduction?... Or just the hybridizer would be alright. Does that sound Okay?

Dave this would just be the the Daylilies, Hosta, Irises, Brugs, and Roses.