Citizen scientist work- vangyaan.com

Request for collaboration to create an dedicated platform for efloraofindia:

On behalf of our group, thank you for your combined effort in collecting data on plant biodiversity at eflora of India. As a computer scientist, I feel thankful for the precious wealth of knowledge your group has created. 
 
I am Dr Kapil, a faculty member at the Department of Computer Applications, NIT Kurukshetra. Our research group is working on plant data. In one of my student’s thesis, we attempted to identify plant species through machine learning methods.
 
We have been working on our project to collect plant data for the last year. Since when I went through the efloraofindia Google group, I want to contribute here in my way to the group. On behalf of my group, we would like to create a web/mobile application for efloraofindia that assists the group in collecting the plant data, identifying it through efloraofIndia group and putting it on the efloraofIndia website, and automating some of the tasks.
 
With this aim, we would like to make this. It would be very generous if some of you could spare some time from your busy schedule to help us understand the working of efloraofindia, and give us feedback during the complete development of the application. 
 
Please register yourself for the same at Google Form and feel free for any query or question to contact me at: ka…@nitkkr.ac.in or Ph 8221811422 or WhatsApp

Request members to participate and help in the project with your views and comments.

In continuation of my previous email and suggestions from …, we are need of your suggestion on the interface images. Please go through below email and answer the following questions. It is highly valuable to us.
Use case 1: Searching without login,
Screen

Question: What are the main features based on which eflora contributors and fans might search for a plant species or biodiversity?

Do we record the search strings used by people on efloraofindia.com? if so, can you share?
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Every user, contributing any kind of data, must share some of his information and this information is taken from him at signup
Screen

but to ensure the privacy of the individual, we have the following questions-

What information from a user should be kept about himself with the system?

What portion of users’ personal information can be shown to other users, and what should be not?

Can you suggest us how many different type users, one the basis of permissions, our group and website has? 

Like in google group, only managers and owners can see members’ information.

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For any contribution and question from the eFlora community, one has to share some details about oneself (to assure that we get the authentic information), so

We have login before actually putting anything on the group desk. This will attach the contribution with a particular person.
Screen

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Once a person is logged in he/she can contribute in various ways
Screen

We need to add Request or Confirm ID button

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The Contribute should take the information similar to the post-
Screen
And the information from posting guidelines-
Date/Time-
Location- Place, Altitude, GPS-
Habitat- Garden/ Urban/ Wild/ Type-
Plant Habit- Tree/ Shrub/ Climber/ Herb-
Height/Length-
Leaves Type/ Shape/ Size-
Inflorescence Type/ Size-
Flowers Size/ Colour/ Calyx/ Bracts-
Fruits Type/ Shape/ Size Seeds-
Other Information like Fragrance, Pollinator, Uses etc.-
like-
Screen

we will try to gather location data and time data from the image itself (any feedback*). However other things will remain in this way to be filled up by user 

*Question: Any other information that should be extracted from image?

Question: What information should be compulsorily taken from contributors, and what should be optional?

How many images (minimum and maximum)?

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The below interface is for explore the observations recorded by users
Screen

Q What keywords do you think should be associated with the search

  1. location
  2. time/date 
  3.  …
  4.  …
  5. …

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Below is the interface for reviewing those works that are requested for ID
Screen

There must not be upvote and down vote buttons over here.(yet to be done). Everywhere instead of Logout, we can have user’s name  

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On clicking one such observation, the feedback/comments/suggestions from reviewers is gathered through comment as shown on next screen
A star on the user shows the requester/contributor
Screen

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Regarding your inputs and suggestions on our citizen scientist work:
I am Dr Kapil, teaching Computer Science in the Department of Computer Applications, NIT Kurukshetra, Haryana. Here is my Google Scholar Profile for your reference.
I got your reference through efloraofindia.com and Dr Suresh Rana. We are trying to build a website to help engage people with plants. For this, we want to develop a list or/ and a hierarchy of questions that can enable people to identify plants well.
Please look at the first phase output of our group at http://www.vangyaan.com/ and guide us to make a good resource which can be helpful for a wider range of people.
Our aim is to 1. Engage people with plants providing them with scientific ways of identifying plants, 2. Collect and disseminate structured information about plants to a wider community and finally 3. Collect local knowledge about plants which might reveal their importance and usage.
Moreover, if possible, help us get some funding to maintain and keep running this website.

A good starting point.
Forwarding it to the group for any feedback from the members.

As discussed with you, pl. refer to Trees of Delhi by Pradip Krishan.
To start with you can keep only trees and then move on to other areas, after you gain some experience in the matter.

Thanks a lot for your kind and appreciative words. We will keep doing it. Our objective is to create an engaging experience for people that can make them keen observer of the nature. It would be great if some of you ask us for more features to add so that we can have a great database for the plants and their traits and keep documenting the changes they are undergoing with time.

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Queries on search at eflora website:

In continuation from our previous mail and appreciation from JM Garg Sir, I want to tell you that we have gone through the website
and the google group of eflora and have identified some interactions and corresponding queries. It will be great help if you could answer us-

Searching without login, 

Question: What are the main features based on which eflora contributors and fans might search for a plant species or biodiversity?
Do we record the search strings used by people on efloraofindia.com? if so, can you share?

How the search works on the site (as it is inbuilt in WordPress), is not clear to me also.
But I search a lot on botanical names (Genus names, species names (part or complete) etc.), common names (part or complete), some features like winged (petiole etc.) or on many things which may throw up limited results to take me closer to the id.
Sometimes also search on genus name + state name, to narrow down on the species which may be reported/ observed from the state.
I sometimes also search on a species name, which may take me to other species pages where mention of that species may also be there as it may have been confused (or similar looking) in the past during the discussions.
There are infinite possibilities and search keywords depend on one’s requirement and familiarity with the site.
I hope it clarifies a bit.
Regarding “Do we record the search strings used by people on efloraofindia.com? if so, can you share?”- I am not aware. But in the past I came across reports from Google Analytics as to the most searched posts on our site everyday, week or month etc. (not available now).

Please help us understand, how we work. Here are some of the screens we have planned, please check and let us know—
Every user, contributing any kind of data, must share some of his information and this information is taken from him at signup

but to ensure the privacy of the individual, we have the following questions-

What information from a user should be kept about himself with the system?

Like

System Required: email-id, password, Name

Our requirement: ___

What portion of users’ personal information can be shown to other users, and what should be not?

Like

System Required: email-id, password

Our requirement: Name

Can you suggest us how many different type users, one the basis of permissions, our group and website has?

like Admin: Who decides about rules /policies of the group? Who can update the website
Contributors
Requesters of information about a specific observation
Surfers of our google group and website
Like in google group, only managers and owners can see members’ information.

For any contribution and question from the eFlora community, one has to share some details about oneself (to assure that we get the authentic information), so
We have login before actually putting anything on the group desk. This will attach the contribution with a particular person.

Regarding: “Can you suggest us how many different type users, one the basis of permissions, our group and website has?”
In our group we have: Owner, Manager and Member.

In our WordPress site we have provision for Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor and Subscriber.

Sir this I know very well

The owner of the group: can only delete the group
Manager: can add and remove people
Member: can post

For the WordPress, I am not very sure of these roles, can you explain?

Thank you … However, I want to understand how you are utilising the user roles.

In our WordPress site, we have provision for Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor and Subscriber.
For WordPress, what are the responsibilities
Who updates the website from the content summarised from Google Group?
If there are many users updating the website, how do we maintain coherency over different pages of the website?
Are there any other tasks that we take up on the website?

At present there is only one Administration (i.e. me).

I am updating the site.
As nobody has come forward, we have not tried any other role.
We have also created ‘Genus ‘ and ‘Family’ pages with details and comparative images, for easier identifications by users and all of us.