[APBeta] Observation attempted but not found
Dan Kuchta
dankuchta at gmail.com
Sun Jul 5 18:38:21 PDT 2009
Hi Paul:
As I'm using the observing sessions, I'm finding what seems to be a
missing feature - the ability to mark something as "Not Found".
Currently, if I look for an object but don't find it, I just don't
enter an observation. But then there is no record that the
observation was attempted and when I look at previous sessions and
objects, it just appears to be an object that I never even tried to
find - even if I actually did try several times. Spending time
attempting to locate an object IS part of an observing session, but
there is no way to record that for an object.
I tried to create my own setting for this by making the lowest
"Rating" popup setting be "Not Found". The problem then is that it
shows up as being observed when it actually has not. In the object
listing it may show several observations when none were actually made.
I'd especially like to be able to look back at my observation history
for an object and see which nights I found it which nights I didn't
and compare that to the conditions for the different nights. That
gives me the ability to understand the minimum conditions needed for
that object to be observed from a particular location.
You might consider putting a permanent (non editable) addition to the
Rating popup with the label "Not Found" or perhaps a separate checkbox
somewhere. The more difficult question is how to represent the not-
found observations in the rest of the UI. They certainly should not
show up as highlighted items when the user has selected highlight
observed. Neither should they contribute to the observation count.
But, in the Observations list in the lower left corner of the
Observations pane, I think it would make sense for them to show up,
but with some indication that they were not found - perhaps red text
or an asterisk or maybe "NF" after the date/time. They should show up
similarly in the Observation database.
I haven't thought this completely through as to its UI implications,
but I just wanted to toss it out there to see what you and others
thought.
-Dan Kuchta
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