informatics-dev
commented
10 years ago Comment by Dimitrios Koureas
Dear Lukas,
Thank you for your comments and questions on Scratchpads. We do take into consideration all our users' feedback in order to improve the level of service provided.
Currently Scratchpads provide the functionality of adding infinite number of images to a specimen. This can be done either through the user interface or in bulk by populating and uploading the corresponding excel template files (Import > Nodes - Excel File Import > Specimen/Observation).
Images are displayed as thumbnails, but can be seen in large format when selected and also downloaded by any user in full resolution.
We do not apply any storage quota to any of the Scratchpads sites.
Scratchpads do provide the required functionality to host, organise and annotate media files using either the inbuilt interface or the import functionality. Documentation can be found at http://help.scratchpads.eu
Scratchpads were not built as a competitive solution to mass cloud storage sites. Scratchpads are a virtual research environment that enable individual researchers and research communities to collaborate, share knowledge, expose their work and publish online and in a standardised way. They facilitate the effective mobilisation, aggregation and re-use of biodiversity data. We conform to community standards in both our data structure model and data exchange models we use.
Once more thank you for your comments and useful feedback.
Kind regards, Dimitris
alycejenni
Description:
Last week I saw myself forced to decide that I give up on hosting my specimen images and movies on the macrostomorpha.info scratchpad for the moment, for a whole series of reasons (some of this may repeat stuff I have said previously, but it might be useful to have these points in one place). Instead I am currently hosting this material by including a link to a publically accessible DropBox folder in the Remarks field of every specimen, which reads:
Images and movies of this specimen are available in a public DropBox folder. Unfortunately hosting this data externally is necessary because the Scratchpads currently offer a very poor user experience for browsing images and movies.
For an example see http://macrostomorpha.info/node/3339
That is not a very kind assessment, but unfortunately perfectly true, at least for the kinds of extensive specimen data that I am using. Here are the main reasons: 1) given that I often have several dozens of images and quite a few movies for every specimen the upload and annotation process is close to useless. The dialog only shows me ten items at a time (sometimes I can select all ten and sometimes not), which would mean that I have to use some iterative process in uploading stuff, which would take essentially forever. 2) the image browser that presents the media is very slow, the images too small, and none of the many video formats that I have tried actually seem to be supported in a satisfactory way or at all (although I have tried many that you list as supported). I think the DropBox browser can serve as a good example of how such a browser should look (although it is also not perfect).
I don't like the DropBox solution very much, because it means that these specimen images will not be properly tagged with the species, specimens and sampling locations. But it is infinitely preferable over hosting the media on the scratchpad (an upside is that a user can easily download all images and movies and study them locally). I was close to giving up on the scratchpads entirely ten days ago, but using this solution I have been able to push the decision into the future. But the question is far from settled. Please give your utmost to consolidate functionality before you move on to implement new stuff.
Finally, I would appreciate a candid response the following question: "Do you actually intend to come up with a solution that would allow me to host my media on the scatchpad?"
In some sombre moments I have entertained the notion that you simply don't want to do this, because you are concerned about server load and/or storage space (the DropBox folder now has 6.5GB). If that is the case then please tell me and I'll try to find another solution. Given that I own the site URL, that might be less disruptive than one would think.
Cheers, Lukas