Re: Iris encyclopedia - some suggested changes
iris@hort.net
  • Subject: Re: Iris encyclopedia - some suggested changes
  • From: R* P* <r*@embarqmail.com>
  • Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2012 14:57:08 -0400 (EDT)
What I hear you asking for is one of two things. 1. Either on each page for a cultivar there be a note that it is historic or 2. that there be a separate list of historic Irises with their own pages. The dates for each cultivar already defines them as historic or not, and each year there is another yearly cohort added. If one has a desire to see historic Irises I do not believe searching for all historic Irises would be useful. You can search for any individual Iris right now, historic or not. It seems redundant to have to say historic when its date of registration is given.

I am sure that I am not explaining myself well. Here is the problem If you asked the Encyclopedia to search by historic Iris you could get a list of all iris that are over 30 years old. That list would be about 45,000 cultivars. It would take almost an hour for the search to create the list with so many irises.

The Iris Register can bring up such a list relatively quickly but it has no designation historic. The Register presently does not contain the 19,000 Irises from 1939 nor the additional ones from 1949, with the exception of just their names. So unfortunately you can not pull up a descriptive listing, but it is possible to have the Iris Register list everything. It takes awhile but it is much faster than the wiki. But as yet it does not contain the earliest irises. The wiki on the other hand does contain a couple of thousand of the early irises and we are getting more up each day.

It would be possible to create pages for every historic Iris inside the Historic Iris web but you would have to enter every one as a new page. That seems unreasonable, since you are essentially asking us to double all our work with the exception of irises of the last 30 years. Actually because there are about 45,000 they would have to be split into more than 5 webs just as we have had to split the tall-bearded irises into five webs because a web only works well when it has under 10,000 pages. But what would be the point?. Getting a list of 45,000 irises does not seem useful. It is almost like saying you want a list of all irises. 

The Encyclopedia breaks up All irises into the classifications of AIS. Historic is a classification that is an attribute not a type, historic encompasses all types not just TBs. I believe what would be more functional are lists based on time periods. People looking for historic irises in my opinion are usually concerned with a time frame. By listing irises within a time frame you can reduce the size of each list to something workable. Presently Irises have dates on their pages. Putting historic as a key word on each page would simply give lists too huge to make any sense of. 

I promoted the founding of HIPS because I love historic irises. But I look at Irises before 1900 in a different way than those between 1900 and 1930, and yet again differently to those in the 1950bs or 1970bs. I think making such web areas for different time periods would be much more productive than simply trying to label 45,000 irises as historic.

As far as my abilty to play in the sandbox with others I have heard the same type of complaints about many people including several people in HIPS. But I have not let that stand in my way of trying to accomplish something. The lesson of the old Greek tragedies was often those who act, are punished by the Gods even if they were the heroes. Whenever you do something there will be someone criticizing. Even if you did it very well they might think you did it late.

I have been banging my head against a wall trying to make a reference platform that makes sense. I am willing to change concepts where I can, but there are lots of limitations that are not within my ability to change. Or doing them would be incredibly time consuming and counterproductive. I wish you would consider carefully what I am trying to say.  I believe directing individuals to time frames could make for a much more interesting presentation than a list that would go on for ever.


----- Original Message -----
Hi Bob and all,

1)  OK, I'm not going to get into tons of detail here -- but I think you
are totally missing the point of what I and Jean are saying.

What we are saying is, the way the iris wiki is now, you can't designate it
as e.g. "tall bearded" AND "historic".  That is a design flaw.  It would
I'm sure have been much easier to fix this earlier!  However, I think it'd
be a very good idea to fix this somehow (get creative, talk with people who
do this stuff for a living).

HIPS does in fact have a definition of "historic iris", one that is over 30
years old.

I don't speak for HIPS in general.  But 4 different people in HIPS have
separately asked me about this, about the wiki -- and all 4 see this as a
problem.  So do I.  So does Jean, as she wrote.  It would be really helpful
if you changed the wiki so that you could classify a cultivar as "historic".

No offense, Bob, but I get the impression that many folks get annoyed with
how you sometimes do things, and so they're not getting involved.  And then
your criticizing them for not getting involved, is NOT a good way to
attract them into getting involved!!

Your big focus is on the iris encyclopedia.  But I think you're not seeing
it how some other folks see it -- for example, I would find it much more
useful and interesting if I could search by "historic iris".  To not have a
searchable category like that is in a way to disregard the interest many
people have in that category.  It'll never be easier than now, to change
how the wiki works!

And so you're kind of asking for/demanding feedback, yet dissing people for
giving you feedback.

I think that that one very basic thing, making it so you could designate a
cultivar as "historic" as well as other categories, would be very helpful,
and would interest people who are interested in old iris.

2)  Some of the data gathering for the wiki has been kind of strange; I got
an email from a woman who said she wanted to put some of my photos on the
wiki, I said sure, as long as you put, on the photo itself, the cultivar
name and my name.  She said that would be a lot of work (actually, it's
pretty easy to do that).  I said that's the condition for using my photos
-- and I told her the reason for that is, I have already in years past seen
some of my photos floating around the internet, mis-identified! so it seems
to me a very good idea to put the cultivar name, directly on the photo.
 Sure, people could take it off, but at least that increases the likelihood
that it'll continue to be correctly identified.

Well, turns out she'd already put a number of my photos on the wiki.  So I
said, please either label them that way, or take them down.  I think she
took them down, but she was grumpy about it.  Now, that wasn't exactly a
good approach!

ANYhow!  I think if you make the wiki so can have multiple designations,
that would help interest a number of people (not just historic iris folks).
 And if you're friendly about the wiki! that would help too!

Gesine

************************************

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [iris] Iris encyclopedia - some suggested changes
> Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2012 15:47:28 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Robert Pries  <robertpries@embarqmail.com>
> Reply-To: iris@hort.net
> To: iris@hort.net
>
> Designing the structure of the Encyclopedia has been a challenge. It
> continues to evolve. The Historic Iris Preservation Society should be
> involved as a group deciding what would be the best way for its evolution
> to continue. So far HIPS has not to my knowledge produced a really workable
> classification system for Historic Irises. Maybe that is necessary, maybe
> not. But it would be crazy to duplicate every page that has an iris over 30
> years old so that Historic Irises could be entered as new cultivar pages in
> the section that allows for new Cultivar pages. A more sensible approach is
> displaying lists in a way in which they may be used. This is a challenge to
> figure out the logic here.
>


> Just as it would be crazy to create a category of Irises that says they
> are blue. Taking an attribute such as historic that would apply to 45,000
> cultivars becomes non-sensible. But if one refines the topic such as all
> blue MDBs then a topic area and list makes more sense. Theoretically one
> could do a search at present for all irises of the years 1931, 1932, 1933,
> and 1934 and you might get a sensible list. But a search for all historic
> irises is just too large and rather useless. I have tried to create
> galleries for time periods under historic irises. As yet I have not
> developed the lists to go into these galleries let alone the images. There
> is just too little time and I am still working on getting the 1939 and 1949
> Irises into the Encyclopedia. Presently the Iris Register has none of
> these.




> A few people in HIPS have been very helpful. But it is obvious that the
> organization has very little understanding of what is possible and how to
> go about it. And generally other than !
>  those few who helped, others have been absent from laying the groundwork.




> The farther we progress the more work it would take to change basic
> structure. If you have concrete suggestions I am willing to listen.
> Presently the need you state is not clear enough for me to act upon. I am
> willing to brainstorm but I have not really heard something really good
> that I can understand and can justify the effort. I really would like to
> make you happy, but maybe it would help if you could explain in detail what
> you want and how people would use it. Then I can figure out how to make it
> workable.  Confused-Bob
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> The point remains that entries for historic iris
> in the encyclopedia have to be manually edited to
> indicate their status as historic - this creates
> a tremendous amount of work that could easily
> have been avoided had the wiki been set up
> to allow more than one designation for a given
> entry (e.g. historic or rebloomer in addition
> to TB, IB, etc.). I also am not aware of any
> easy way to search for historics in the wiki.
>
> Is it any wonder that HIPS has not been particularly
> enthusiastic about embracing the wiki, when their
> iris of interest are given second-class status?
>
> Jean "not speaking for HIPS" Richter
>
>
> On 7/20/2012 4:08 AM, Robert Pries wrote:
>
>> Gesine you can already do this and I am working with Mike to get his
>> pedigree charts there. You are just trying to do it in a way that does not
>> work. I will explain later. Historic is a different type of classification
>> than TB or IB. and is accomplished in other ways. The pedigree charts have
>> been a particular interest and I have some ways to get them there but I am
>> hoping to create some even better ways that would be more elegant in that
>> they will display thumbnail images in the pedigree.
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> Hi Robert Pries and all,
>>
>> OK, while you're thinking about changes to the Iris Encyclopedia, why not
>> figure out how to make it so you can have a cultivar in more than one
>> category?
>>
>> Four people have separately asked me about this -- that you can't put an
>> iris in as both e.g. "tall bearded" and as "historic", and pointed out
>> that
>> this makes it a lot harder to look up historics on the encyclopedia.
>>
>> You could start with Mike Lowe's pedigree sheets, by just putting the
>> pages-as-is up, somewhere in the encyclopedia.
>> http://www.worldiris.com/**public_html/Dykes_peds/**Coralie.html<http://www.worldiris.com/public_html/Dykes_peds/Coralie.html>
>>
>> Gesine

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