[Geysers] Response to survey comments

[Will Boekel]

Since I am the starter of this whole discussion I am going to provide my view on some of the comments.

Comment: User voted YES- So the A is now standing for Approximate instead of Assumed?

Response: I actually like this because the time in the database will be approximate and I like the terminology better than assumed because I guess some people have a very bad distaste for that word.


Comment: User voted NO- Let the programmers code whatever they think is best.

Response: First off hats off to Jake Young and Alan Glennon you guys do a great job on your systems. Now I know one or two persons can make a decision that can be against the vast majority of what the community wants and will effect everyone. So are you willing to put all the data taking policies into two people’s hands and to have no say in it??? Also Jake has also told me that the changes that he makes to his system are prompted by a want or need that is voiced from the community.


Comment: User voted NO- This issue should be discussed by people who actually use the times to compute statistics, not a general survey. My Excel spreadsheets have been set up to deal with the issue of computing approximate intervals with out using an artificial code such as "A".

Response: Everybody needs to be in on this survey because if only a handful of people will use it because they do data analysis how does everybody else know how they should report there observations so we can make use of them. Also in my data calculations in Excel, I still need to put some sort of time in for the calculation and if the system does that for me so I don’t need to read all the comments to get those times, that equals time saved. By using a code for these eruptions I can also write a simple If-then statement for if the code column has an “A” or whatever it ends up being it will automatically place a “~” for example.


Comment:User voted YES- My thoughts on this are complex. And maybe I'll say something in the list serve, but for now. Here's what I say. If this goes in, it has to be used sparingly, and only for the geysers that we have a good grip on behavior wise. for extremely erratic geysers (Aurum for example) we should not use it at all.

Response: I totally agree this code should probably be used on the rare geysers that show clear signs the next morning, aka F&M, Giant, ect.


Comment: Using 9999 or similar instead of a time.

Response: I see the idea of making it a non possible time but to get the real timeframe I would still need to read the comments which I am trying to prevent.



For this new code I intend to only use it in Geysertimes, I do not intend to change how the log in the visitor center is written. Also these kind of entries go all the way back in the OFVCL-EV logs so I wanted to try and clear this issue up before I transfer the rest of the logs so I don’t have to go through them all again.

Thanks,

Will Boekel

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