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In http://www.diptera.info/forum/viewthread.php?forum_id=16&thread_id=6851 Jorge asked why do we love Diptera.
I don?t think that because Diptera is better than Hymenoptera (neither worse).
I think that we love Diptera, because Paul created this place. The place where we can show our photos and get name under this photos. The place where we can show our knowledge and improve our knowledge. The place where we made a Diptera Gallery the best on the world, I think. The place where we can meet friends. The place to relax even...

I have an idea/dream to make life of our small society even more interesting and more usefull (which is almost the same). It is Diptera DataBase.
What I mean?
I mean that a lot of images passed and will pass through Diptera.info. Among them there are good percent of images with species level ID and this percent trands to increase along with our experience. At least this images contain (or should contain) information about date, place and person = the information on lebel on museum collected material. When Dr.X write book/article about some fly, he has this very information available via collection he works with. Often his own collection seems for Dr.X not enought and Dr. X has to travel abroad to look another collection. We can make collection available for anybody on line.
More. Dr. X works with dead fly and usualy can know nothing about biology of this fly. But our images are often live ones and can give rich information about fly biology, about everything ? substrate, feeding, mating and so on...
More. Sometime we are lucky enouthg to gather good information about some fly permiting to write short article. But much more usualy this information is fragmentare and finally we lost this information. DateBase will permit make this information available for Dr. X and he will write in his article, for example, that according Michael Becker (http://www.diptera.info/forum/viewthread.php?forum_id=5&thread_id=6886) S.strercoria feeds on flowers too:o.
More. I think that we have large enought and experienced enought society to ensure necessary level of scientific criticism for our information.
So, with Diptera Database we all will be able to make real scientific observations every day. May be by small, but real and regular steps.
Of course it requires some job. I?m ready to do this job.
Well, as a first step I should ask Paul?s aggrement to link this DataBase somehow with Diptera.info. But, as a very first step, not to disturb Paul useless, I would like to aks Diptera.info members to tell your opinions about this idea, please.

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Interesting idea. It would be nice to be able to organize the knowledge on the diptera.info forum in some easy-to-grasp way. I'm not sure how it's supposed to appear in practice ...

I'm also thinking of all photos submitted to this site and that doesn't make it to the gallery. It would be great, for example, to be able to easily find all photos of Anthomyiidae even if they aren't ID to species level. I think there are much to be learned from that.

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An excellent idea.
I think you could follow the way things are done on BugGuide.net. Take a look at the Taxonomy page for Tabanus:

http://bugguide.n...11452/tree

Then click on Browse and you will see thumbnails of the species arranged alphabetically
Click on the 1st species (Tabanus abdominalis)
Click on Info; this is where any information on the species such as identification, similar species, distribution, behaviour, references in both print and electronically can be placed. This is still incomplete for most species.
Click on Images, then click on recent images. Here you will see all the photos for this species with collection data. Click on a thumbnail for a larger photo.

The way BugGuide works is it lets people post an image, usually in ID Request. Once the species is correctly identified an Editor moves it to the species page. A few individuals are Editors and each can make a species page and edit a species page. Regular contributors cannot make a species page and they cannot edit a species page.
The advantage of this system is that the workload is spread over several knowledgeable people; there is too much work for a single editor to do.

Each species has its own page with everything that is known about the species under headings: Taxonomy, Browse (for images), Information, Images (in chronological order of submission).
Each Genus has the same headings, as does each Family.
Check out all the data on the Family Tabanidae (the Real Flies):D

In any system you choose I think there must be some easy way that one of the editors can move a submitted photo to its proper species page.

A major problem with Diptera.info is that most of the photos of individual species are not in the Gallery. One should be able to click on, for example Anthomyiidae, in a list of Fly Families and get thumbnails of every Anthomyiid photo submitted to Diptera.info. This is where the idea of editors comes in, they can tag an image and move it to the family page without any consultation with the photographer. A photographer who submits a photo to Diptera.info does so with the understanding that the image (if of good enough quality) will be moved to its species page. Or, if the photo is of poor quality and/or shows nothing of usefulness for identifying the species it will be deleted.

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I like the structure of bugguide.net, but to build a site like that from scratch is a hell of a job. I guess it's Troy Bartlett that made the bugguide application, but is he willing to let anyone else use it!? Another important thing to take into consideration - Diptera.info is founded by Paul and I think he is a dedicated PHP-Fusian B)

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I think the gallery here is somewhat tedious. The principal problem is that one needs to post the images one by one, and than someone has to approve them. This is too slow. Also it is somewhat difficult to write a description with the image. One needs to submit it, and than wait for its acceptance, than come back and write a comment.

The main reason why I do not post so many images here (unless new family or so) is that I make so many images that it would take an immense time to post them here one by one.

I would strongly recommend the diptera. info site to take over the gallery2 image management system, which I use for my web site. In my view this is far superior to the gallery that php-fusion uses. (I know because I also run a php-fusion based web site, this content management system has the best user managing capabilities).

The advantage of galery2 is that users can be given various privilages. They can directly upload. In addition, there are extremely user-friendly software for most operating systems, by which one can upload lots of photos. I have now more than 3000 diptera images on my web site, 98% of them I made myself. I could not handle these large numbers with the gallery option here.

In gallery 2 various users can be given rights to albums, subalbums. Thereby sorting the images to the right albums would not be so difficult. The community is excellent here.

Of course this would still not be an optimal solution, because the ideal solution is always a custom made web site. But far superior to the situation now.

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I agree what you said about gallery. The forum is great, but we must think on a new method for gallery: perhaps a new section with gallery2 management system as Gabor said. The idea of Nikita is great. :) Let?s go with it.

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Thank you for your replies, dear friends.
I?m affraid I didn?t explain clear enought what I mean.
1. The education or ID help is not the purpose of DataBase. Diptera.info itself to my opinion is good enought for education.
2. I mean base of pure facts conserning distribution and biology of Diptera. The fact itself may contain attached image(s) as confirmation or illustration or not contain, generaly it doesn?t much matter. This fact may be result of posted thread and consequent discution or may be posted directly for date base if discution and confirmation seem not required.
3. I also have to disaggree about our Gallery. Gallery of Diptera.info is not the largest available. It is the Gallery with ID one may trust! If we?ll send not dosen, but thousand images, than nobody will check the ID and we?ll get mixture of correctly and uncorrectly ID images. There are yet thousands of such images in i-net, sometimes nice, but always useless. When one put Det. Lebel on collected fly, one writes his name and date on this lebel. It is a certain person responsibility and reputation in such Det. lebel. Our images in Gallery also mean det. lebel confirmed by Paul Beuk as administrator. So, there is deep difference between post ID and Gellery ID responsibility level, I think.
Nikita

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Det. label eg. Pont, A. 2007 (note all important year) should always be included since determination even from specimens is always subjective ( http://en.wikiped...es_Problem )and I am sure Paul does not want the entire responsiblity for all ids. Being Administrator is just that. Nikita is absolutely correct in all other respects and poor id on the web is a big problem.There is a big task ahead but "The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step" (Chairman Mao).All the best Nikita Still very busy with problems here.Robert

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I think the database should include at least one "good" image of the species and perhaps other photos showing the diagnostic characters of the species. It could also show a photo of the habitat when this is specialized.

The Gallery could be a lot better. I am not suggesting that all images go in there, only those that are correctly identified. As an example, there are 2 great images on Hybomitra bimaculata by Black http://www.dipter...ad_id=6620. These are under the title Tabanus. They are not in the Gallery and will not be in there because, presumably, Black has not submitted them to Paul for inclusion. It would be nice if a sub-editor could simply move these images to the Gallery. Thus the potential for the Gallery is high but this potential is not being fully utilized.
Of course, if you include 1 or more "good images" in your database then the Gallery will eventually be obsolete. At the moment it contains very little useful information about a species; hardly anyone adds a comment to a Gallery image but there are often several useful comments on non-Gallery images:p

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The comments are disappointingly few. It could be very useful to have a note on similar species with the differential characters (see glossary for term) given. Also some photos show diagnostic features of higher taxa very well and this could be emphasised. The gallery will only improve if everyone helps but opinionsare bound to differ on taxonomic issues.The useful comments on non gallery pics I lift myself since new info appears all the time. Eg. this photo (not in the gallery http://diptera.in...post_28234 shows the ptilinium with the hinged frons and the pale anterior spiracle, basicosta and red jowls with black hairs of Callipora vicina a very important species often misidentified as C. vomitoria. Slainte Robert
P.S perhaps we should trial some gallery comments to see what may be achieved.

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Let's put it this way: I trust the identification but I can impossibly know all beasties presented for the Gallery.
Crex put it quite nicely: I am a Fusionado. I am one for a number of reasons. First, as Xespok mentioned, administration is very easy and good, and, being a member of the in-crowd, I know it is getting better. Second, it presents a CMS that has all basic features included and offers the possibilities to expand it using so-called infusions while still maintaining the same overall look for the whole site. Third, the way the system works below the hood is easy enough for me as a relatively unexperienced code writer to still develop my own modules.

Submission for and administration of the Gallery might be less tedious, I admit. The next version of the CMS will have many updates for the Photo Gallery (though I do not yet know how many will be visible for visitors). One change will be the possibility to move pictures from one album to another, a feature that is in dear need at present. That will allow the option to create an album with identifications that need a final confirmation and make submitted images visible before they are positioned at the correct place in the respective albums. Otherwise, I want to keep the Gallery restricted to identified species in a way similar to the way it is organised now and certainly not expand it to become a portfolio for those who make the pictures. IMAO: The illustrated species is important, not the photographer (no offense to the photographers meant). The forum is intended for identification queries and may contain very substandard images (that would never make it to the Gallery under normal circumstances) that the owner still wants to have identified.
As to moving the images from the forum to the Gallery: I consider that the responsibility of the photographer. At busy times it would be a lot of work and at present it is at least the case, that the owner of the image is also mentioned as the one who submitted it. If I (or anyone else with the administrative rights) would do that, the name of the photographer would be replaced by the name of the administrator. Undesirable in my view.

And the Diptera DataBase: Well, talking about humongous tasks...: There is one. Maybe something to take into WikiPedia? Taking it into a true database would require a database design and administrator, an interface (web application) and something like a editorial board that screens all information. Probably very useful but oh so time consuming. Anyone willing to sponsor me seriously should write to me and if I can earn a living of it, I would be happy to start working on it.

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And what about put in each photo in gallery... the link for the thread where the specimen was discussed? If all photos had this, we could see more details and save space!
It is consensual that is important to have sure about ID for gallery, of course. This is a strong point for gallery!

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I agree with Nikita that the quality of any gallery is dependent on the quality of people and the amount of work they are willing to put into constructing it.

I also recognize that there are many galleries particularly for Diptera that are extremely inaccurate. However this has nothing to do with the size of the gallery, there are large and accurate galleries and small and inaccurate ones as well.

I am also not saying that the way I am constructing my gallery is the best method for diptera.info. I upload the undetermined images to the family or subfamily albums, so any album is a mixture of undetermined, partially determined or determined images, hopefully there are very few misidentifications. I think misidentifications are part of the game, in every large collection there is a certain part of misidentified material. This is acceptable as long as the percentage is low. But I have many photos and few people to leave comments. Here there would be many people who would comment.

Paul obviously does not know every family sufficiently to be a master regulator. What he does, is that he follows the forums and will let an image go into the gallery if he thinks based on the forum that it is correctly identified or identified by an expert. This is not a foolproof method.

Yet my critcicsm was not addressing this issue at all.

Let me tell how I organize my gallery. My gallery consists of two parts. One that is accessible for me only as the administrator, and another part "Upload your images to this album", which is accessible for every user. Users can upload images to this accessible folder, but they can only be moved by administrator privileges to the contolled part. This means that my gallery can not be destroyed by others.

So the working model for diptera.info would be the following.

There should be a quality controlled album for diptera built in a similar system to what you can see here or on my web site. There could be other types of albums as well, not just taxonomic albums, but ones that depict certain behavior, or one that depict abnormal fiies or fly predators etc. Or an album with extremely common diptera.

And there would be a non-quality controlled part for posting images by users. The administrators would have the privileges to move any image from the non-controlled part to the controlled part. Any users could browse the freshly uploaded images and comment them, just like when you comment here on the forum.

Experts would be assigned to be responsible for maintaining the controlled part. Any of us could take responsibility for maintaining a family album or a few. Bad images or superfluous images would be deleted by the administrators. This is rather easy in gallery2, because almost everything one can do en masse. I think the administration of gallery2 is extremely easy to master.

This system would ensure that all images posted here would go to the gallery and that only those images would get to the controlled part that the community thinks interesting.

For my gallery I have the following rules: At most 8 images per one type of animal. Higher quality images have priority. Photos in natural settings have higher priority. Multiple views have priority.

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The Japanese dipterists once tried to start a wiki but the initiative has died. It was simply too difficult to create new pages all the time.

Japanese Diptera Wiki site

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I was hesitant to mention Wikipedia but sometimes info might be best placed there.If the species is universally important and the information not too specific I "steal" info occasionally so it is not lost. Apologies to the anonyomous victims of shameless theft. At other times members have been very generous with photos which I never steal See http://en.wikiped...punculidae -read the description page for the credit. Always glad to get anything for the Diptera pages if this does not conflict with Diptera.info interests ( I cross-link wherever possible). More generally A problem is developing I sense. It is impossible to keep track of the many general data-bases for Diptera as whole.Broadening our work too much may not be wise unless we can find a salary for Paul who as was the case with Meigen http://en.wikiped...elm_Meigen is not paid for his Diptera work - but may soon be better known:D.No web then.

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I support Tony T's (why do people hide their full name?) suggestion of including habitat shots on Diptera.info. It would need some regulation so as not to be dominated by gardens supporting Episyrphus balteatus. But for the rarer species from natural habitats there would be several uses for views of the habitat. Firstly, it is just interesting to see where species are found. It helps you to search for the species in new places if you know what kind of habitat to look in. Several photos from different places may reveal a common feature of the sites where the species is found, so telling us something of its ecological needs. And it could promote conservation of the species, if 10 years from now, it allows a nature reserve owner to see what the habitat used to be like and convinces them of the need to clear some willow scrub from a marsh or thin a woodland.

John Bratton
North Wales

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Because when I log in it is much easier to type "Tony T" than to type "Anthony Willian Thomas". Also saves you the effort, as in your post:D

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I can't appreciate the problem. BugGuide.net has 1 administrator (not his full time job) who seeems to take no active part other than fix problems if and when they arise. The site has 11,315 contributors with 455 active in the past 7 days. The everyday running of the site is by 67 editors (all volumteers). Since June 1 2007 there have been 3,300 posts (300/day!}. There are 7,003 species pages and 89,366 images.

should read "...full time job", putting in a closing bracket resulted in a smiley face !!

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Either disable the smileys in the post or type "job )". :P

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As to Bugguide: I do not want to be 'just' a site administrator for the technical affairs, neither am I ready yet to let in umpteen administrators on the site. Depending on how the site develops I may ask people to help managing the site (I have had offers) but at the moment the amount of time involved is managable.

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I would be very sorry to see this idea die because it seems too big a task now. Every now and then I trawl through diptera.info and collate information about genera or families I am interested in for my own use. I do think information is being effectively lost because there are now enough posts that using the search facility can be quite clunky and time consuming.

Is the important task at the moment to sift out and collate the information? It is the data entry that is the first hurdle because it will be the most time consuming. This could probably be done using a really simple spreadsheet or table initially, and made available on request initially rather than online from the start.

Just a thought - might be impossibly naive though.

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The upcoming should also have improved search capabilities, also for the photo gallery.

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Gabor: I don?t mean your Gallery as an example of bad one. To tell you truth I mostly my own experiens which moved me from photografer to zoologist with the conclusion that phografer without zoological knowledge is useless, but zoologist without photografic skils is not bad at all.
Paul: Of course, you are right, the responsibility for Gallery ID is authors. But it is you who dicide which level of responsibility may be done in every case.
In addition 1 - our large society find sooner or later any misID.
In addition 2 - it seems to me that most of easy photografed and easy identified species are in Gallery yet and every next step will be more difficult in future.

Thank you all for your opinions. I need some time to think its over:o

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Hello Nikita,



We all need some time to think it over. You had the talent to coerce us to think a little further. Nobody knows what it will be.

Well, it is the future...

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when we begin to build a diptera database? :D I think this is the time! ;)

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Nikita: can you use one of the instant messaging programs? Makes discussion a little easier. ;)