Answered Create item to post in breeding reports?

[beaker41]

So i need to create a item first in order to submit a breeding report? Or is the item itself the report ?

 

[MrDeranged]

I really need to find some time to get something written up

Yes, first you would submit the item. (The item would be the species name that you're breeding). Once we approve the item, you would have to go back and then leave the "report" by clicking "rate & review" on the item page.

What species would you like to leave a breeding report on? I can see about creating the item for you and let you know when it's ready for you to put your report up...

 

[beaker41]

I really need to find some time to get something written up

Yes, first you would submit the item. (The item would be the species name that you're breeding). Once we approve the item, you would have to go back and then leave the "report" by clicking "rate & review" on the item page.

What species would you like to leave a breeding report on? I can see about creating the item for you and let you know when it's ready for you to put your report up...

Had a failed sac of nhandu coloratovillosus sadly, but i figured the dates might help out someone else's efforts

 

[MrDeranged]

New item has been created and can be found here.

 

[beaker41]

New item has been created and can be found here.

Not sure how to reply to this item to post the report ... I can get to the link to the old reports but still cant post there, at bottom still says insufficient privilages

 

[MrDeranged]

The old reports are closed (old reviews too). On the link above, click on the "rate & review" link towards the bottom of the page. It will take you to the breeding report form.

 

[beaker41]

The old reports are closed (old reviews too). On the link above, click on the "rate & review" link towards the bottom of the page. It will take you to the breeding report form.

Ugh not very intuitive i wouldnt have guessed the review link for sure. Also cant seem to get it posted due to the mishmash of fields to fill out, they start out logical enough, date, sucessful or not, special notes which i guess is "pre care" pairing, (pairing?) observations , post mating care, (sac?) time and care, final details and after all that review. Apparently all the fields are required and some of them have char requirements, though the error i get is concerning "summary which doesnt seem to be a field. Frustrating.

 

[beaker41]

Unsuccessful
Pre care conditions
Both kept at 75 degrees with slightly moist coco fiber and offered a small water dish. The male was kept in the center section of a 10 gallon tank divided in three and a female on either side of him.

Pairings
Both females were paired with the male several times over a weeks time starting 8/13/2015 taking a 24 hour break for the male whenever a hookup occurred. They were paired in a large common area about 3' in diameter, the female placed in the center first followed by the male on a side. The first two pairings with this female went nice and easy , the male tapping immediately on entering the common area. The females were both very responsive and did not pursue him too aggressively after the pairings.
Sac dates
Sac was dropped 11/20/2015 and was about 1.5"-2" diameter. The female carefully guarded and rolled it, leaving it only to eat twice, then on 12/27 she abandoned it in her refuse corner. Sac looked to contain around 200 eggs, about a third of which were to the eggs with legs stage, but everything was stuck together and one side of the egg sac was black with mold

 

[MrDeranged]

All the fields were generated from the old suggested format for breeding reports. The only section that should have a character minimum is the last one. Did you get an actual error when you tried to submit your report?

 

[MrDeranged]

On an added note, almost all the fields that you are asked to fill out have a description right underneath them telling the user what information is requested for that field. The only one that doesn't have a description is the "review" field at the very end. This field is basically for a summary of the entire attempt. It is also the only field that should have a minimum character requirement. You should technically be able to put "n/a" in any of the other fields requiring text (although if you did that for every field, the report wouldn't be very useful and we'd probably remove it )

Regards

 

[beaker41]

First i got an error about must be under 150 char for one of the top fields. After cutting and pasting the whole thing seperated into all the feilds i got the error that the "summary" feild has a 1000 char max . After fighting my damn iphone with the cuts and pastes and typing several sections completely over I'd had enough for the night. If the user must go through this approval process to create the object that must then be reviewed , wouldnt it just be simpler to have the user submit their report then have an admin format and post it ?
If the idea is to make it useable for the average person then why not go ahead and create the objects yourselves since there's only going to be one per species, and change the 5 star review button to "post review". I understand the need to get raw data out of these posts and not have to sift through a lot of extra, but there's really no need for all those feilds in the review form, especially if they've got char req on them and the error messages don't contain the correct name of the feild in question. Also, puting a sticky in breeding and bite reports with a link to the "object maker" would be nice, having to find my way to it via the link in the for sale section isn't exactly intuitive. I feels like the form should follow the original sticky for the forum as far as sections for info, but it doesn't really matter so long as i can get past the errors

 

[MrDeranged]

I'm asking for this information because I need to know exactly which fields to track down the errors. As I said, the only section that should have minimum characters is the final "review" field. The others should not have maximums that I know of. Is there any way to recreate what information you were putting in which field and send it to me so I can test it for myself?

While everything can be done on a phone, it would be much easier with a keyboard at a desktop. Unfortunately, we don't have the time to format and post user reports. I haven't even had time to put a sticky in the breeding and bite reports (for most people to ignore anyway )

We're going to create items, but there are over 800 species of tarantulas alone, I'm pretty sure we're not going to get bite reports for all of them, nor do we want a bunch of empty items. Item creation takes about 2 mintues, there's barely any information required for the bite/sting/breeding items. The fields aren't there for us to get raw data, the fields are there to force users to leave the information that is requested in the sticky in the breeding report forum that is generally never followed. For the most part we merged some and added some. The amount in the sticky and the amount in the current report form are exactly the same.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

 

[beaker41]

The two errors i got i believe are to do with the last field, "review". First i got error that it was required , then that there was a 150 char min , then i got frustrated and just tries to post the entire thing in review, then got the error that "summary must be under 1000 charachters".

 

[beaker41]

As i read back through my replies i hope that this doesnt come off like me just a huge gripe, i really want to see the breeding reports become the resource i know they can, but when there are all these extra steps involved it's just going to cause people who would ordinarily be happy to conveniently share their information to become frustrated and just not bother.
Again this probably comes off as nit picking but let me specifically outline the differences between the previous form's labels and what we currently have.
Sucessful-> Sucessful
Nothing wrong here
Any special care or preliminary notes for the lovers -> special notes
"Special notes" is a little vague , something to indicate that this is a section for special "care" specifically for the parents. The notes are on the care , the care is special and the care is for the parents. The notes are not special.
How they were paired -> pairing
A little general but ok
Any observations on the hookup -> observations
Again , the observations are specifically about the hookup
Any special post mating care -> post mating
Mostly ok, would be nice to specify the care that is wanted here, a description of actions taken by the person rather than general observations
Time to sac-> time and care
This is a specific number of days that represents how long between pairing and sac drop, one of the only numbers that people browsing these reports want or need.
Time to emerge/hatch -> ??
Again, an important number that is now consolidated into the previous category.
Final details -> final details
This is ok
??-> review
This one still mystifies me, seems like a leftover from an ecommerce framework where the object is meant to be an item for sale, and the "rate and review" button that serves as a "submit a new report" button as another artifact of this conversion.

The reason these categories need to be more specific is inline with your desire for more complete and useful reports. Honestly the only thong i really care about on a breeding report are the dates.
When paired
When dropped sac
When opened sac and how far development
Whem final instar molt

Again I'd like to emphasize that this isn't an admonishment of the job that you guys are doing on the site, or just an impotent gripe seasion. The site really is so much better, especially on mobile and with regard to the conversation system which is infinitely better. I really value this site as it is the best resource by far for information as well as connecting to others in a relatively small community. I hope that these suggestions are helpful in making the breeding and bite reports more current, and would like to thank you for the considerable effort you've obviously put into the site's remodel.
Thanks
Jeremy

 

[MrDeranged]

Thank you for the info. Could you please try and post your review again while keeping the following in mind.

1. Please put only the information pertaining to the section in each individual field
2. If a field has "required" next to it, it's required.
3. There should be no minimum requirement or maximum (or no maximum you should go over if you only input information pertaining to the current field) requirement for any of the fields other than the final one titled "Review"
4. The "Review" field currently has a minimum of 100 characters and a maximum of 2500 characters.
5. The "Review" field is for a summary of the entire breeding report/any additional notes you would like to make.

Regards and sorry for any inconvenience.

 

[MrDeranged]

posted that at the same time you posted your most recent one, lol.

Thank you for the constructive feedback, this is exactly what we're looking for. As soon as I have some time, I will definitely take a look at what you wrote in more depth.

Just to touch on something you mentioned, you hit the nail on the head, the "reports" section is using the same software that is used for the reviews section. We're looking into ways to customize it further for "individual" purposes as opposed to how it currently is where we're trying to fit the report functionality into what was created for reviews. In its current incarnation, a lot of things that we wish were configurable are global settings that can't be changed per category

 

[beaker41]

I appreciate your responses , i will try to submit my report again probably from a pc as apple is awful with their copy paste scrolling . Also, is it ok to put image links in the report? I saw the upload image link but no way to link uploads in the post. Usually i would just post a photobucket link. ( i never delete my photos so they continue to work)

 

[MrDeranged]

There should be an "upload images" button next to the submit review button. If you click that, it should open upload fields.

 

[MrDeranged]

not upload fields, but a window where you can select files to upload. Up to 10 per report. If I remember right, can't be more than 1024 pixels per side and can't be more than 1 mb in size (per picture).

 

[The Snark]

I'm seeing the problem here. It's a mess and unfortunately very common in academic circles.

This breeding report is basically a white paper, a scientific study, as submitted for a peer review prior to publishing.
Both the peer review submission and the white paper must follow a standard format and contain, or not (n/a) data in all fields.

Some academic institutes offer examples of acceptable peer review submissions. Some offer templates. These help A LOT!! A researcher may be able to find his way blindfolded through RNA spectrum analysis but fall flat on his/her face trying to get it all on paper in an acceptable format. Secretaries who know peer review compositions become valuable commodities and even get wooed from one department to another with offers of perks and benefits. This is especially the case when departmental funding is on the line and a department is facing several dozen review rejections. (My mother was offered a nice near new car to shift her from astro to life sciences just to get the darned review papers in proper format and content.)

I recently checked at NOAA. They have over 100 to be reviewed papers being given the tennis match treatment, reject-rewrite-reject-rewrite. A couple, critical global warming findings, have been stuck in that loop for well over a year.

So it would seem, and benefit both AB and the researcher/breeder/whatever, if we could avoid as much of that academic nightmare as possible. Copious examples of what is acceptable. Fields to be filled in given great amounts of leeway. Either the review committee acts the tyrant pedant on it's high throne and the review papers backlog for miles, or compromises are reached, standards are relaxed and given some leeway (but not at the expense of leaving gaping holes) and plenty of examples are available on how to write what concisely.

PS And no. Writing a review paper on tap-a-talk is a fast trip to the funny farm reserved for extreme masochists.