Chondostereum purpureum

[david dell]

Today's joy,first entry for the day 22nd november ---didn't want to find a "synonym".
Then,after entering and locking date,place people and group --up came two red boxes demanding substrate and quantity---entered them and pushed button "B".You can see what arrived at the dataset. I have gone for a quiet laydown.

[admin]

Ah, this was partly my error, though with a degree of justification! The problem that has been arising at this end is that recorders have not always remembered to fill various essential boxes, without which the accuracy of recording falls down. Hence we have had place names not filled, ecosystems not filled etc. This makes for rather more work than I would wish for at this end! In order to resolve that problem I had requested that certain boxes were made mandatory. Alas, they should not have included Assoc. Org., Abundance, Notes. An over-zealous correction. it shall be changed!

It is worth remembering that on the old system, where everything came in on Excel sheets, there was a lot of work involved for a database manager in correcting and filling incomplete and inaccurate records. We are trying to eliminate much of this work on CATE2 to create a higher standard of recording accuracy and, not unimportant, labour for the manager who has to do the 'cleaning' .

Ideally it is important for recorders to add information like substrate and abundance, but they are not absolutely essential.

MJ

[david dell]

Once records are posted,can we get to them to fill in extra data,without deleting and re-entering? It might apply to new records but what about old ones?
There is an offer!

[admin]

Essentially, any record can be edited by the recorder on his or her My Datasets until it is submitted for activation. Once the record has been activated, however, the individual recorder loses control over it in the sense of being able to edit it on line, although it is still their data and they can request its deletion or download back at any time.

The process, once activated, is to apply to me or John or Doreen Bailey to make a change for you through the database management team.

There are good reasons for this! Let us say that you created a set of records attributed to North Hampshire, and discovered some time later that they should have been attributed to Berkshire. The database manager needs to be able to keep tabs on such a change in order to notify other authorities such as LRCs who may have access to CATE data. There is also a technical matter that if each of xxx recorders was able to access the main database and change their records at will it would be an IT nightmare, as well as putting CATE online out of sync with other potential access routes such as NBN!

MJ

[david dell]

We will see what we can do with "new" data!