(meteorobs) Update of the IMO visual report form

[Geert Barentsen]

Hey Malcolm, Chris, Bruce et al.,

Thanks for the useful comments!

The reason why the online visual report form looks like it looks is that I
decided (back in 2005) to make a simple "copy" of the IMO paper form that
had been around for 10-15 years and resembles the VMDB format. (Whereas many
custom excel sheets or ascii-formats in use at that time contained the data
in slightly different ways, making it very time-consuming to enter them in
the VMDB.)

Only later did I start adapting the form to the digital age, e.g. by adding
the error checks. There is much room for improvements, because the form and
the database behind it are not in the digital age yet. (Although the latter
part will improve a lot in the weeks to come.)


> The question I have is: who is your audience for this page? It seems to
> me that nobody but a serious observer is going to fill the thing out.

True, and in either case, a tutorial and some form of "help tooltips" would
be welcome.


> It would seem sufficient to simply ask for the starting and ending UTs
> (please, use yyyy-mm-dd hhmm notation- anything else encourages errors),
> and then just hhmm-hhmm for individual observations.

I guess the order comes from the fact that people talk on their tape this
way ("it is the night of eight to nine november twothousandandseven"). The
fields are properly labelled so there have been no mistakes so far, but I
guess I should change it to ISO format at some point.
(I say "at some point" because I am about to leave on holidays for 2 weeks,
not because I don't care :-)))


> It's a bit more work, but if I were making this form I'd add a little
> scripting. I think the observed showers should be selected from a
> dropdown so that they are guaranteed to be valid, and then those codes
> filled in on the observation report before it gets filled in. That is,

It is not a dropdown to allow people to report a non-IMO shower in the case
of exceptional activity (i.e. an outburst), but I reckon the "non-IMO shower
warning"  should be given right away in a more dynamic way.

Again, thanks for the comments and thanks all for using the form -- the new
possibilities (e.g. the live page) motivate me to invest time.

Best wishes,
Geert




2007/11/28, Chris Peterson < clp at alumni.caltech.edu>:
>
> The entire form strikes me as rather confusing. Dates and times are
> mixed, and formats aren't particularly well chosen.
>
> The question I have is: who is your audience for this page? It seems to
> me that nobody but a serious observer is going to fill the thing out. I
> have to think such a person is capable of entering the proper UT for an
> observation (especially with a note on the form for reminder).
>
> I have to deal with date errors on my fireball report form, but that is
> filled in by casual, chance observers with little or no observation
> experience. Surely the IMO form has a different audience.
>
> It would seem sufficient to simply ask for the starting and ending UTs
> (please, use yyyy-mm-dd hhmm notation- anything else encourages errors),
> and then just hhmm-hhmm for individual observations.
>
> It's a bit more work, but if I were making this form I'd add a little
> scripting. I think the observed showers should be selected from a
> dropdown so that they are guaranteed to be valid, and then those codes
> filled in on the observation report before it gets filled in. That is,
> the report becomes a two-step operation: first, the basic information is
> entered along with the observed showers. This is submitted (with some
> error checking), which produces a second page presenting the actual
> report form.
>
> Chris
>
> *****************************************
> Chris L Peterson
> Cloudbait Observatory
> http://www.cloudbait.com
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Geert Barentsen" < geert at barentsen.be>
> To: <imo-news at yahoogroups.com>; <meteorobs at meteorobs.org >
> Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 2:37 PM
> Subject: (meteorobs) Update of the IMO visual report form
>
>
> > Dear meteor observers,
> >
> > An additional field has been added to the header of the online visual
> > report
> > form at the IMO website. You are now asked to specify the night of the
> > observation as a consecutive pair of local dates. For example, tonight
> > would
> > be specified as "26/27-11-2007", no matter if your observation started
> > before or after midnight Universal Time. This field has been added to
> > prevent mistakes in the reported "starting date" of the observation.
> >
> > As always, feedback is very welcome!
> >
> > http://www.imo.net/visual/report/electronic
> >
> > Good luck observing!
> > Geert Barentsen
>
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