Major upgrade under way. Some known issues.

23 Jan 2025

Hi All,

Another thing in the long list of growing pains due to the platform becoming extremely busy and under increased load on a daily basis.

The dictionary that populates our quick search and species selection functionality had become absolutely massive and was causing NatureMapr to grind to a halt.

This was due to the need to download and parse an enormous dictionary file with over 50,000 entries inside your web browser which created a payload of almost 10mb.

You may have noticed the website falling intermittently over the past few days and becoming progressively slower and slower. We have also been hit with significantly increased costs to keep feeding it sufficient resources.

The framework that powered our quick search and species selection functionality has been unsupported since 2015!

It is now in the bin as we've had to redevelop the entire thing to be 50 times more efficient at short notice to allow the web site to keep running.

As of right now, there are a few glitches with quick search results and species selection which we are aware of aim to have resolved ASAP.

Thanks for your continued support and understanding while we continue to toughen up this Australian made platform for increased scale 👍

10 comments

JasonPStewartNMsnc2016 wrote:

23 Jan 2025

Awesome – please keep up this awesome work ! :)

MatthewFrawley wrote:

23 Jan 2025

Good stuff @AaronClausen keep up the great work!

AaronClausen wrote:

23 Jan 2025

Thanks for support @JasonPStewartNMsnc2016 @MatthewFrawley (Social Media Marketing and Merch Manager)

JasonPStewartNMsnc2016 wrote:

23 Jan 2025

@AaronClausen i'm curious of the approximate numbers (eg. merely rounded percentages is enough info)
of the breakdown into animals, plants and fungi (termed kingdoms in taxonomy) ?
– components of the ca. 50,000 entries in the quick search dictionary.

And i share here now the emphasis on the awareness that in scientific names, homonyms (same names)
do occur occasionally in current names in different kingdoms (termed hemihomonyms) .

For an Au example : Breynia – genus of shrubs and trees plants spp. and genus of echinoderms animals spp. .

References (in brief, without full citations):

• Australian Plant Name Index (APNI) – Australian Plant Census (APC) :
https://biodiversity.org.au/nsl/services/search/names?product=APNI&name=Breynia&inc.scientific=on&max=100&display=apni&search=true
.

• Australian Faunal Directory (AFD) :
https://biodiversity.org.au/afd/taxa/Breynia
.

• Jorge Rubén Sánchez-González (2020)
Hemi- and Homonyms in the Big Data Era.
https://doi.org/10.3390/d12120472
.

• Alexey Shipunov (2013 January)
The problem of hemihomonyms and the on-line hemihomonyms database (HHDB).
Bionomina 4 (1)
https://doi.org/10.11646/bionomina.4.1.3

AaronClausen wrote:

23 Jan 2025

Please check the overarching dashboard: https://naturemapr.org/dashboard

Also - quick search dictionary also needs to support lookup of locations and users - so the numbers are larger than just species numbers alone etc.

JasonPStewartNMsnc2016 wrote:

23 Jan 2025

Thank you .

And ahaaa !

ConBoekel wrote:

23 Jan 2025

Aaron
Thank you. Much appreciated. Growing pains are only to be expected and congratulations to you and your team for identifying and addressing them. In the interim, I am happy to be patient with any glitches in the sure anticipation that they will be fixed.

KorinneM wrote:

24 Jan 2025

Was stoked to see an awesome change this evening of 'personal' being added on the subject line of confirmations of my sightings. Will make it so much easier as a moderator to separate out. Thank you for implementing it!

RodDeb wrote:

25 Jan 2025

@AaronClausen Thank you so very much to you and anyone else helping with this major upgrade for your continued hard work. It worked perfectly today. Really appreciate all you do.

KylieWaldon wrote:

27 Jan 2025

Yep noticed it, but just went round it. In some cases I can find the species name without having to use the search or have enough idea of where to go to trip over it. You do what you need to. :)

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