Would anyone use and contribute to an opensourced "Tortoise table" like database

jcase

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The tortoise table site, while great, has been having reliability issues, and well it is just too conservative in some ratings.

If I put some spare server cycles into an open source data base (Where anyone could clone or download the entire database) would anyone else be willing to contribute?
 

Tom

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I would. There are so many plants that I don't know about, and I would love to have a list of stuff that people are actually using and know to be safe. There are so many regional plants that I am olives to, but could be great food sources. An example that I seldom hear mentioned is kudzu vine in the South Eastern US. It was introduced as animal forage, but few people use it as tortoise food. I've fed it to sulcatas while visiting GA, and they ate it right up. I'd be happy to contribute a list of my commonly used food items if someone wanted to take the time to organize and maintain a site like that.
 

jcase

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I would. There are so many plants that I don't know about, and I would love to have a list of stuff that people are actually using and know to be safe. There are so many regional plants that I am olives to, but could be great food sources. An example that I seldom hear mentioned is kudzu vine in the South Eastern US. It was introduced as animal forage, but few people use it as tortoise food. I've fed it to sulcatas while visiting GA, and they ate it right up. I'd be happy to contribute a list of my commonly used food items if someone wanted to take the time to organize and maintain a site like that.
I've eradicated the kudzu here, at least I hope. That stuff is AWFUL.

I'll play with some code for an interface, I'm not a front end engineer so its not going to be pretty at first.
 

Maddoggy

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Yes you can count me in.Living in south Florida and having two sulcatas I have large outdoor enclosures and its very difficult to almost impossible to identify and eradicate any plant that is not considered safe by tortoise table standards.A lot of the plants I encounter are not even listed so not knowing I try to eradicate them. I use a plant identification app on my I phone to identify them but that is not completely accurate.I think the whole tortoise community could benefit from it.
 

Len B

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I would like to see something like that because there's so much misinformation about what is safe and beneficial for tortoises in their in captive environmental diet. When I first joined TFO I was feeding mushrooms and elephant ear type plants to some of my tortoise's and many members disagreed. Time has proven that a large percentage of their natural diet contains these items.
 

jcase

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I would like to make it so that anyone could clone and use the information. Like if @Tom decided I was doing it wrong, or my servers were going down too much, or I was too much of an arrogant jerk, that he could just clone the project from github (a code/information repository from Microsoft) and fork the project into his own.
The tortoise table site, while great, has been having reliability issues, and well it is just too conservative in some ratings.

If I put some spare server cycles into an open source data base (Where anyone could clone or download the entire database) would anyone else be willing to contribute?
@Kapidolo Farms is this something you would be interested in contributing to? I know my inspiration from the idea came from comments you made here, and the fact that the site has been more or less down for a week.

I would. There are so many plants that I don't know about, and I would love to have a list of stuff that people are actually using and know to be safe. There are so many regional plants that I am olives to, but could be great food sources. An example that I seldom hear mentioned is kudzu vine in the South Eastern US. It was introduced as animal forage, but few people use it as tortoise food. I've fed it to sulcatas while visiting GA, and they ate it right up. I'd be happy to contribute a list of my commonly used food items if someone wanted to take the time to organize and maintain a site like that.
Thoughts on what fields I should have for each entry, obvious ones would be picture, potential look a likes (to warn ppl if dangerous plants that look the same exist), genus, species, "feedability" and bibliography


Building out the server, the backend and my makeshift frontend (website) is only a days job. The real work and value is entirely in the information.

I could also spin up a phone app to interface directly with it or even contain a copy of the database so no network is needed(not just parse results from the webpage like the TTT app is currently doing)
 

Tim Carlisle

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How would the database be updated and monitored? Wiki? I'm pretty good with the backend stuff (mySQL, table/query structure, etc...), but setting up field and query rules would largely depend on who is adding/updating the entries. Sounds like a long overdue venture as I'm finding that my trust in tortoisetable is dwindling. lol
 

jcase

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How would the database be updated and monitored? Wiki? I'm pretty good with the backend stuff (mySQL, table/query structure, etc...), but setting up field and query rules would largely depend on who is adding/updating the entries. Sounds like a long overdue venture as I'm finding that my trust in tortoisetable is dwindling. lol
I'm shopping right now, but briefly.

First, I'm a embedded security engineer by trade (defense contractor, exploit developer). Out of paranoia/distrust I'll probably write the interface myself.

I am weak on UX/UI and databases. I've only written 2 things in the last 25 years that had a UI, and 95% of my database experience is in exploitation and SQLite, neither which is helpful here.

I'm undecided on the interface

I'm thinking allowing two kinds of contributions, trusted and no trusted. Trusted contributors, the entries are immediately added. Untrusted ones bust be audited and approved by trusted ones.

This is still all in the planning phase, nothing set in stone and I'm open to anyone's expertise.
 

jcase

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How would the database be updated and monitored? Wiki? I'm pretty good with the backend stuff (mySQL, table/query structure, etc...), but setting up field and query rules would largely depend on who is adding/updating the entries. Sounds like a long overdue venture as I'm finding that my trust in tortoisetable is dwindling. lol
If you want to get your hands dirty, shoot me a private message and let's get in touch on something more appropriate for dev collaboration
 

Tim Carlisle

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If you want to get your hands dirty, shoot me a private message and let's get in touch on something more appropriate for dev collaboration
Sounds like "fun", actually. Been a while since I've done full life cycle stuff. I've written a few intranets for various state agencies in the past.
 

MEEJogja

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As someone who is very good at setting up systems and then leaving them to go unmaintained, I would suggest having a discussion with the tortoise table people.

It sounds like what you're after could be achieved by an addition to their traffic light system for user contributions. Blue = annecdotally safe / user submitted? Then the ability to contribute to their database.

If someone with time and motivation were to approach me and offer to contribute to my database or get involved with helping maintain my site (which looks distinctly 2012) I would definitely give them the time of day.

One system with a bigger team > two systems with smaller teams, especially when we are talking volunteers.
 

jcase

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As someone who is very good at setting up systems and then leaving them to go unmaintained, I would suggest having a discussion with the tortoise table people.

It sounds like what you're after could be achieved by an addition to their traffic light system for user contributions. Blue = annecdotally safe / user submitted? Then the ability to contribute to their database.

If someone with time and motivation were to approach me and offer to contribute to my database or get involved with helping maintain my site (which looks distinctly 2012) I would definitely give them the time of day.

One system with a bigger team > two systems with smaller teams, especially when we are talking volunteers.
Preface, I love tortoise table, I think they built a great thing, it just isn't what I would have built. I still use it (when it is online and functional).

Philosophical differences exist on multiple levels between my vision and their vision. They take a significantly more conservative approach to what is safe and what is not, and limit their food sources that are plant based.

I'm also not aware of an (authorized) way to clone their setup, i believe they are keeping it fairly proprietary. Which is their right and I support it, however if it goes down, there is no way to access it (like right now, half the site is down, if you click on a plant or category it goes to a blank page).

I'm not looking to copy or clone their setup, I'm looking to build something a bit different. Contributing to their setup without convincing them of major changes would not accomplish my goals.

I disagree on the "one system with a bigger team statement" as far as engineering goes, a smaller competent team will always outperform a large team, unless you are speaking of an entire ecosystem like and OS (which we are not here).

On adding food sources, you are absolutely correct, a bigger team of knowledgeable people is better, and if our goals were the same, then that would be the best idea.
 

jcase

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Whelp

Let's roll. Domain purchased, configuring a server now. For time being I'll run it on a VM in San Francisco, if that becomes too much for the VM, I'll migrate to to real hardware but i think it will be fine.
 

Tim Carlisle

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Whelp

Let's roll. Domain purchased, configuring a server now. For time being I'll run it on a VM in San Francisco, if that becomes too much for the VM, I'll migrate to to real hardware but i think it will be fine.
I was going to suggest a VM. Good deal! Don't need a whole lot of power to do what you're proposing.
 

Tim Carlisle

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It is all about the provider's snapshot and backup capabilities. Those have saved my rear more than once, if it wasnt for that I'd still be using baremetal everywhere
Agreed. I have to connect to several dozen myself. Only drawback is the inability to authenticate using PKI 2FA.
 

jcase

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If anyone has design capabilities and wants to contribute as far as page layouts go, please hit me up.

If not, we get a functional UI/UX developed by someone who only writes commandline based applications.
 
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