What to do about insufficient information?

Today’s post is going to highlight a recent conversation amongst Notes from Nature citizen scientists regarding what to do when a specimen doesn’t seem to have most of the necessary information.  Is it best to just leave fields blank?  Is it better to just skip it?  Is it a “Top Secret” specimen?  These are great questions, and ones which will likely come up over and over again throughout the life of Notes from Nature.  Here’s the conversation.  How would you deal with this?

• by carolely

  The label has only the scientific name and a question about that. Should I create a record and leave all the other fields blank?

• by SandersClan

  I vote yes.

• by ghewson

  Yes, then it’ll be flagged as needing more information.

• by carolely

  Thanks for the help. It seems I lost this page when I started this discussion so I never got to enter it. However, I’ll know what to do next time.

• by nosenabook

  I’m glad to know what to do as well, when I saw one like this, I passed on to the next specimen.

• by nosenabook in response to ghewson’s comment

  Responding to ghewson, it sounds like it is better to leave a field blank than enter “none given” say, for the reference. I started doing that because it was easier than arguing with the form – YES skip this field – and because R. K. Godfrey rarely gives a reference.

  I’ll leave that field blank from here on out, unless or until I hear different.

• by xairbusdriver

  I seem to have found a “Top Secret” specimen, twice! 😉 If you come across Image ANN000039x, you’ll see what I mean. The ‘Location’ info seems to te a test site for White Out(r)! “…N side of _ Creek Road (S of Rte _), ca. air mi ESE of _. __________ of Sec ” I sure hope L. C. Anderson didn’t get into any trouble finding that specimen! 8) LOL!

• by ghewson in response to xairbusdriver’s comment

  Ah yes, I had that, and tagged it #redaction. But if you search for that tag, there are 0 results! Spookyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

• by SandersClan in response to xairbusdriver’s comment

  I can’t decide whether this is a Roswell, thing, the MIB, or what!