Encounters missing from Marked Individual pages

Bug Reports
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1

In which Wildbook did the issue occur?
Flukebook

What operating system were you using? (eg. MacOS 10.15.3)
WIndows 10, version 22H2 (operating system build: 19045.3570)

What web browser were you using? (eg. Chrome 79)
Chrome Version 119.0.6045.124

What is your role on the site? (admin, researcher, etc)
Researcher

What happened?

I work on sperm whales with CCS organization. Beginning of the year (feb/march 2023), I’ve imported all of my pictures data on Flukebook for 2021 and 2022 and I’ve got some match with DSWP program for 45 of the individuals (out of 62). So I merged CCS individuals with DSWP ones when matching. And now I’ve got this big issue: when I go on “my data”, “view my individuals”, I cannot see anymore a part of the individuals that merged with DSWP individuals.

So I thought, it was just a bug so I checked on the individual page of each individual (going to “search”, “individual search” and then selecting “Physeter macrocephalus” before searching) and I found that the merging process has been successful because the page of the individual displays DSWP name as the main one and CCS name in the mention “other values”. But when looking into the encounters section, I found that neither my encounters nor the pictures associated are appearing.

Because of the mention " X encounter(s) (not all may be currently visible)", I thought it was maybe an usual situation after a merging process but when I decided to upload the excel file linked, my encounters are still missing.
I’m quite worried because I don’t know where are my encounters and pictures associated for those individuals, and if I have to import all of those photos again.

As an example, here is a list of the 10 first individuals concerned:
CCS_Pm_0001 = 6058; CCS_Pm_0002 = 5560; CCS_Pm_0004 = 6219; CCS_Pm_0005 = 6348; CCS_Pm_0007 = 5163 ; CCS_Pm_0009=5126; CCS_Pm_0010=5946; CCS_Pm_0011=6093; CCS_Pm_0012=5585; CCS_Pm_0021=5147

I think this is a recent problem because at the time that I’ve imported all (around April 2023), it was correct and I could find my encounters in the excel uploaded. It’s just recently when checking that everything was still here before going through 2023 pictures with Flukebook that I found out that a part of my individuals have disappeared.

What did you expect to happen?
To have all of my individuals present into the dedicated section, even if it was under their new names for the merged ones.

What are some steps we could take to reproduce the issue?
You could try to go to the individual page of one of the individual quoted above, for example CCS_Pm_0013 (aka 6242) and see that the pictures and date were CCS team has seen this individual are missing (2021/07/21; 2022/09/27; 2022/09/28; 2022/09/29).

2

Hi @lsimon

It sounds like there might be two separate issues going on and I want to make sure I understand before I offer next steps:

  • After merging individuals, the Encounters you previously uploaded for those individuals aren’t linked on the Marked Individual page anymore
  • You uploaded a new bulk import with what you believed were the missing Encounters but they still don’t appear on the Marked Individual pages or in your My Encounters page.

Is that accurate?

3

Hi @Anastasia,

Sorry for the misunderstanding, there is only one problem which is the first you mention.

The second you mention does not exist but sorry it’s totally my fault because I used the word upload instead of download. So I just wanted to tell you that in April, when downloading the excel file with all the encounters on my computer, I had all the encounters (mine and DSWP for merged individuals) appearing and now, when I’m doing the same thing, I cannot find my encounters on the spreadsheet downloaded. So that’s when I’ve really started to worry that those encounters might have completely disappeared from flukebook.

I hope this is clearer now, sorry for my english !

4

It’s ok, thank you for clarifying!

Can you email your exported spreadsheet to services@wildme.org and also share the URL to the search results you exported from?

5

Hi again @Anastasia !

Looking though the exported spreadsheet, I figured out that all the data after 2018 were not present in the spreadsheet, even if some encounters happen after.

You can see the case of individual 6058 which has been seen:

Here are the URL to the search results I exported from for:

  • only the individual 6058 : Flukebook | Login

  • all the Physeter macrocephalus into the database:

I’ve emailed you both of the exported spreadsheet. You can see in the first one that none of the sighting after 2018 are appearing (none even the one from the DSWP). You can also see in the second one that all my individuals matching with DSWP individuals aren’t appearing into the spreadsheet.

Here is the list of all my individuals for which the merging has been successful but the encounters are still not appearing neither on the individual page nor into the spreadsheet downloaded:

CCS_Pm_0001 = 6058; CCS_Pm_0002 = 5560; CCS_Pm_0004 = 6219; CCS_Pm_0005 = 6348; CCS_Pm_0007 = 5163 ; CCS_Pm_0009=5126; CCS_Pm_0010=5946; CCS_Pm_0011=6093; CCS_Pm_0012=5585; CCS_Pm_0021=5147; CCS_Pm_0023=5127, CCS_Pm_0024=5151; CCS_Pm_0025=5562; CCS_Pm_0036=5144, CCS_Pm_0037=5162, CCS_Pm_0038=5588; CCS_Pm_0039=6088; CCS_Pm_0040=5586; CCS_Pm_0041=6017; CCS_Pm_0043=5575; CCS_Pm_0045=6196; CCS_Pm_0047=6197; CCS_Pm_0054=6247; CCS_Pm_0055=6237; CCS_Pm_0061=6422

Moreover, some of my other individuals that were matching with DSWP and for which I requested the merging did not merge with the DSWP individuals: for some of them, the name of my individual is correctly attached to DSWP individual on the page of the individual (even if the encounter is still not present) but the initial page of my individual before merging is still existing with the encounters (maybe it can be due to the duplicates of names, I don’t know).

For those ones, since I still have the encounters present on my individuals pages, I think I will rename them manually on the page of each of DSWP individual (when I will be sure that this process is not going to make my encounters disappear from Flukebook).

6

Hi @lsimon Can you double-check the email address you sent your spreadsheets to? I don’t see recent emails from you there.

7

Hi @Anastasia !
I sent it again to you today with two email address, in case the one I first used wasn’t working properly

1 Like
8

I got both of your messages this morning, thank you!

I need some time to review your spreadsheets and I’ll follow up here soon.

9

Thanks for your patience. It looks like the encounters you’re missing came from a bulk import that was deleted, but still had pending merge requests at the time. Merge requests get sent to other users when you don’t own any of the previous encounters of the individual you want to merge with. If the other users doesn’t respond within 2 weeks, the merge is automatically approved.

These missing examples you gave came from encounters uploaded on or before March 16th. Here’s the list of previously imported sperm whale spreadsheets that meet that timeframe. The ones without links are the ones that have been deleted from the system. Your missing Encounters likely come from one of the spreadsheets without a link:

It looks like some of the IDs were merged because an empty shell of the individual happened after the bulk import was deleted. This is why you’re seeing the CCS IDs in the Marked Individual page even when there aren’t any of your Encounters listed with it. That is a bug on our side that we’ll correct so if an import or individual with a pending merge gets deleted in the future, the pending merge request gets canceled.

10

Hi @Anastasia !

Thanks for these highlights even if I still can’t understand why these bulk imports have been deleted, since I don’t remember doing it.

What I found really weird is that on this bulk import for example (Flukebook | Login), where are present almost all my individuals from CCS_Pm_0001 to CCS_Pm_0022, some of them got their name on the “Individual” column and some names are missing even though I’m sure I had named all of them. But I think that’s because I’ve done the merging of these individuals with DSWP ones on a posterior bulk import that have been deleted so all the individuals present on this bulk import have been deleted, even if the individuals were present on previous bulk import (so the name annotation of those individuals disappeared from the previous bulk import).

Anyway, I think I will just upload my capture-mark-recapture catalog to have all my individuals and set manually the name of each individual.

Thanks again,
Bests,
Louise :smile: