pcplantdb

[Stephanie Gerson <sgerson@stanfordalumni.org>]

Not sure if this helps, but perhaps if users could search ala google:

"globe artichoke" + "zone 9" + ants

that would help them find what they need through all the comments?

A more general question: what informational resources are the easiest to 
use and why?  How to make information the easiest to navigate?
*s

  

------ Original Message ------
Received: 07:20 AM PST, 03/30/2005
From: Chad Knepp <pyg@galatea.org>
To: Permaculture Plant Database <pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] needing direction

Richard Morris writes:
 > Chad Knepp wrote:
 > 
 > > dev.permaculture.info is current.  The latest changes are edit and
 > > delete of comments.  Look at plant=4433 for some examples or make 
your
 > > own with the accounts "Test User" and "Test Two" both have password 
of
 > > "password".  Try to hack other accounts if you can.
 > 
 > Works for me.
 > 
 > > I'm hoping that a norm will develop of people replying to comments 
and
 > > keeping a threaded discussion going under the sections Uses, 
Culture,
 > > etc.
 > 
 > Hum, not sure if we want thing to look like a threaded discussion.
 > This will give it a very different feel to a more wiki-style approach.
 > 
 > Danger with discussion is that things could get long and rambleing.
 > I perfer an environent which encourages things are a bit more focused.
 > 
 > I think we'll need some discusion about this.
 > Not to worry for now. Its still very dev at moment and the 
 > infrastructure is good.

Well, I was thinking that moderation would straighten a lot of the
ramble.  Moderation could even override threading, so the highest
comment in a thread could reparent the original... or something.  I
agree that threading has some issues, but the absence of threading
*really* has issues when you start to deal with hundreds of comments
on a page.  Of course user/authors could ignore threading if they wish
and just attach a comment to the plant directly.  I see threading as
being sort of the section topic (Uses, Propagation, etc.) in this
case.  I think the thing that will save us from many comments of mixed
quality is moderation, whether they are threaded or not.

 > >  > One thing I'd be very keen to see is mixing in the tanplant data.
 > >  > I know the guy who submitted it would be keen to see his data 
live on 
 > >  > the web. Its also technically chalanging in how we can mix the 
two data 
 > >  > sets. This seems to fit well with the comment idea. Think of this 
as
 > >  > another large batch of comments. (It would be OK to miss out some 
fields
 > >  > if clashes emerge).
 > > 
 > > Well, I was hoping that when authorship features where implemented,
 > > that someone [else] would add the data.  Having the server seperated
 > > from the client would allow xml-rpc custom clients to add datasets
 > > such as this.
 > 
 > I'm happy to add this. But I'd need some instruction on how to do it.
 > Its probably easiest if I do it in SQL as its a lot of data to add.

Well, it could also be done with custom clients (xml-rpc) and would
probably be even easier than direct SQL.... that's my hope anyway for
xml-rpc clients.

 > Two problems spring to mind.
 > 1) Latin names may be different. So I'd need to get hold
 >      of synoyms to find appropriate matches.

This is not really hard to do.  I did this with the USDA plants
database at one point and found around 600 matches of botanical names
and synonyms (synonyms is a seperate table).  It's about a paragraph
of SQL though.

 > 2) Scheme difference. There some fields in tanplants
 > which don't fit with pfaf namely
 > 
 > STEM - Stem description
 > LVS - Leaf description
 > INFL - Inflorescense description
 > FRUIT - Fruit description
 > ROOT - Root Description

These look like plant attributes to me.  I need to do some database
restructuring when things aquire authors/owners. This would be a good
time to make changes to the schema.  We should talk again about the
necessary attributes a plant should have.  IIRC everyone liked the
existing schema but nobody had anything super important to
add... except 'root habit'.

 > BIOL - Biological industrial uses of this plant.
 > CHEM - Chemistry information about this plant.
 > COMR - Commercial application of this plant.
 > PERS - My own personal experimentation and use of this plant.

These look to me like comment types of information, except for CHEM
and I'm not sure what that is even.

 > Are we going to be stuck with just the pfaf sections/heading
 > or can users add their own?

Well, I think the attributes of a plant should become fixed at some
point, and I'm not really sure I want to implement column additions to
tables by end users;-)  I think a lot of the misc. type information
can be effectively stored and retrieved via comments.

 > > I think that our dataset should be able to accommodate all pertinent
 > > info, if not we have some schema work to do.
 > 
 > If I can fit this data in, then I'll be happy with the schema!
 > (i.e. it will be flexable enough).

If there is pertinent info. and you can't fit it in
appropriately/effectively we have failed.

Cheers,
Chad

-- 
Chad Knepp
python -c 'import base64;print 
base64.decodestring("cHlnQGdhbGF0ZWEub3Jn")'
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+++++++++++++++
Stephanie Gerson
sgerson@stanfordalumni.org
(c) 415.871.5683


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