How to prevent database pollution or how to clean up the insight-Live data. Your views please.

[Marina Reijsmeijer (Kleierij)]

My main reason to use Insight-Live is the chemistry calculation and comparison between recipes. Many recipes entered into the database fail to calculate chemistry, because the materials are misspelled, named differently or the colouring oxides are included. I cannot change the recipe when I am not the owner. So what should I do? Let's take Leach Clear as an example.

 

Material "frit,Ferro 3124" does not exist in the Materials data  and hence the calculation fails.

I could

1- copy the recipe and change it but that results in recipe pollution

2- ask the owner to change it, but I hate to bother him, especially since he entered very many recipes

3- add "frit, Ferro 3124" to  Our Materials with a reference to Ferro Frit 3124 and do something similar for "feldspar, Custer" and "kaolin, calcined".  This pollutes the Our Materials data.

On top of this solution 3 does not work when coloring oxides or eg. bentonite are specified as materials and not as additions.

And I still have to revert to solution 1 when I need to replace a material that I cannot buy here by one that I can get.

So, what do you think the best approach would be?

[Kathy Ransom]

Agree about pollution on Insight-Live and I checked quite a few of my additions to the db.  I am confused about picture titles though as I remember reading about the codes to use in naming pics.  My earliest additions are named with codes but i don't remember why or how to name them now!  I also remember searching for recipes by looking at our collection of pics but couldn't find that option on the db today.  Anyone have the scoop on this?

[Norm Stuart]

I would certainly appreciate you letting me know if any of "my recipes" have unlinked ingredients or other problems.

For a time George let me have access to fix some of his recipes, as the Insight-Live database is quite particular about naming ingredients, but I didn't have time to go through all of his recipes. In some instances a defective recipe is "owned" by a former member, in which case I sometimes added a new corrected version and asked George Lewter to delete the original defective recipe as a duplicate.

As an example of naming, Copper Oxide is not a raw material, but it is as Cupric Oxide. Borax is not an ingredient but Borax Pentahydrate is. China Clay is not a raw material but Grolleg Kaolin with the same chemistry is. Spanish Iron Oxide is not an ingredient name but Spanish Red Iron Oxide is.

So if a raw material doesn't become a link when you hit "Save and Done", you have to check Digitalfire to determine the naming convention they use for that ingredient.

I have added a relatively few ingredients to the database of "Our Materials" when I find Digitalfire genuinely has no listing for that material.

Hopefully two of the raw materials I added, Silicon Carbide and Lithium Fluoride, as being calculated correctly by Insight-Live. At one time Tony Hansen had added lithium fluoride to the Digitalfire database, but a number of ignorant people completely lacking any understanding of chemistry persuaded him that this raw material from Laguna Clay releases toxic fluorine fumes - a wholly erroneous idea, flatly contradicted by the K/Cal magnitude of the exothermic reaction of formation for this compound. You can get fluorine off-gassing from Cryolite, but not lithium fluoride.

Crocus Martis has not been available for decades, so I have substituted the chemistry of the synthetic Bayer product New Mexico Clay sells as Crocus Martis. Digitalfire has the historic chemistry of Crocus Martis if you need it.

The raw material wood ash is obviously highly variable and neither Digitalfire nor I provide a chemistry, so the chemistry of glazes with wood ash is not being calculated correctly, especially in regard to expansion.

[Marina Reijsmeijer (Kleierij)]

Hi Kathy,

You may mean something else, but when you open "Our Pictures" you'll see a search bar where you can enter a word to find in the picture title. I had a look at your Oil Spot Overcoat (where you may want to change to G-200 Feldspar and Ferro Frit 3134 and move zircopax to the additions) and noticed the...

Kathy Ransom said:

Agree about pollution on Insight-Live and I checked quite a few of my additions to the db.  I am confused about picture titles though as I remember reading about the codes to use in naming pics.  My earliest additions are named with codes but i don't remember why or how to name them now!  I also remember searching for recipes by looking at our collection of pics but couldn't find that option on the db today.  Anyone have the scoop on this?

[Marina Reijsmeijer (Kleierij)]

Thanks Norm, I will let you know if I find one of your recipes has a problem (but I'm pretty sure they don't). I think most problems are in the batch imported recipes. 

The "Our Materials" data is not polluted yet, but it will be if we start adding aliases for other names for the same material. I am a bit confused about the search though, because when I search for 3134 with the "show reference materials" unchecked I find 2 aliases: Ferro frit 3134(same name)  and ferro frit 3134 Walkers" and those do not show on a blank search or in your list. Apparently they are in  "Our Materials" ?

Anyway, so far I have made a copy of a recipe that i want to calculate and delete it when I am done, or I added and deleted a material, but it would be nice to have a better and agreed upon solution. I noticed that one european feldspar i added to the materials, vanished, so my recipes do not calculate anymore either.

Norm Stuart said:

I would certainly appreciate you letting me know if any of "my recipes" have unlinked ingredients or other problems.

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[Marina Reijsmeijer (Kleierij)]

trying for the 4th time to reply, somehow my text does not make it to the site. It seems a good idea to add the CG6 sequence number to the picture title (in the Picture title field), but usually a number is not assigned until the testing is complete, so it will have to be added later. I don't know whether this picture naming convention was agreed upon or where it is documented.

Kathy Ransom said:

Agree about pollution on Insight-Live and I checked quite a few of my additions to the db.  I am confused about picture titles though as I remember reading about the codes to use in naming pics.  My earliest additions are named with codes but i don't remember why or how to name them now!  I also remember searching for recipes by looking at our collection of pics but couldn't find that option on the db today.  Anyone have the scoop on this?

[Kathy Ransom]

Trying to read the rest of your message Marina but nothing came through after "Ferro Frit 3134 and move zircopax to the additions) and noticed the...

 

[Norm Stuart]

How do you do a search with the show reference materials?  That's new to me.

When I'm looking for raw materials I go to Google type  Digitalfire 3134  which gives me this page.

http://digitalfire.com/4sight/material/ferro_frit_3134_351.html

Or whatever ingredient I'm looking for.  You don't have to have a Digitalfire membership if you search these pages with Google, although the membership is inexpensive, I think I paid $30 for a five year membership.

The primary ingredient is a Ferro Frit 3134, with a list of substitute frits from other manufacturers around the world.

But there are other manufacturers listed below separately, such as Ceradel Frit 3134. When I click on that link, I see a chemistry which is similar, but far from identical, which is why it is given its own page in Digitalfire.  But I don't see a link to Ferro Frit 3134 Walkers, so if you could explain how you do your search, that would be ever so helpful.

The only ingredients in "Our Materials" I have ever deleted were entries I added, specifically China Clay and Spanish Iron Oxide once I realized what the Reference Database called these ingredients. Perhaps George deleted the European Feldspar you added? It's not easy to enter a new ingredient complete with chemistry, so having one deleted by someone else would annoy me.

I just fixed "my recipe" for Spotted Aqua Brown which George Lewter was clever enough to notice I had scrambled when I entered it.

Marina Reijsmeijer (Kleierij) said:

Thanks Norm, I will let you know if I find one of your recipes has a problem (but I'm pretty sure they don't). I think most problems are in the batch imported recipes. 

The "Our Materials" data is not polluted yet, but it will be if we start adding aliases for other names for the same material. I am a bit confused about the search though, because

when I search for 3134 with the "show reference materials" unchecked I find 2 aliases: Ferro frit 3134(same name)  and ferro frit 3134 Walkers" and those do not show on a blank search or in your list. Apparently they are in  "Our Materials" ?

Anyway, so far I have made a copy of a recipe that i want to calculate and delete it when I am done, or I added and deleted a material, but it would be nice to have a better and agreed upon solution. I noticed that one european feldspar i added to the materials, vanished, so my recipes do not calculate anymore either.

[Norm Stuart]

I think having any photos is a big advantage to a glaze recipe.  The only codes I'm aware of is when I created a recipe variant and add a photo for that, I believe this second photo is also added to the original recipe with a code to the variant.  I have certainly never added anything to a photo other than a title and a description.  If I'm supposed to add a code to each photo I don't know about it.

Kathy Ransom said:

Agree about pollution on Insight-Live and I checked quite a few of my additions to the db.  I am confused about picture titles though as I remember reading about the codes to use in naming pics.  My earliest additions are named with codes but i don't remember why or how to name them now!  I also remember searching for recipes by looking at our collection of pics but couldn't find that option on the db today.  Anyone have the scoop on this?

[George Lewter]

The initial setup of the C6P group database was accomplished with a batch import of all the recipes from the Sankey text database. All those recipes were thus assigned as being mine (George Lewter). Any recipe more than 6 months old that has no notes or photos can be considered fair game for anyone who wants to take ownership. Go ahead and make a duplicate, clean up the ingredient list, so all are recognized for chemistry calculations. As soon as you test that recipe, and post notes of your results, you can assign an autonumber to the recipe, and post your photo (under that number, if you like). The recipe becomes yours at that point. If you notify me, I will cross check the two recipes side-by-side, and delete the original. I would also appreciate a heads up when you find duplicated recipes that aren't being actively worked on.

I delete autonumbers on any recipes I come across that have no notes or photos, because they are inactive, untested, and unproven as far as our group is concerned.

I have asked Tony to give us a mechanism so we can copy a recipe from the group database to private work-spaces for testing and adjustment, without "polluting" the group database with duplicate recipes. Then when the testing is complete, we can bring the recipe back to the group area as a new glaze or a variation. I don't yet have a time line on when this might be accomplished.

[Kathy Ransom]

I found the convention for pic codes Norm and it follows the recipe code with addition e.g.. a, b, etc.  I'll be happy to help with cleaning up the recipes you imported from Sankey text George.

[Marina Reijsmeijer (Kleierij)]

You check the box next to "show reference materials" I did not, so these must be in our data.

Norm Stuart said:

How do you do a search with the show reference materials?  That's new to me.

When I'm looking for raw materials I go to Google type  Digitalfire 3134  which gives me this following page.

http://digitalfire.com/4sight/material/ferro_frit_3134_351.html

Or whatever ingredient I'm looking for.  You don't have to have a Digitalfire membership if you search these pages with Google, although the membership is inexpensive, I think I paid $30 for a five year membership.

The primary ingredient is a Ferro Frit 3134, with a list of substitute frits from other manufacturers around the world.

But there are other manufacturers listed below separately, such as Ceradel Frit 3134. When I click on that link, I see a chemistry which is similar, but far from identical, which is why it is given its own page in Digitalfire.  But I don't see a link to Ferro Frit 3134 Walkers, so if you could explain how you do your search, that would be ever so helpful.

The only ingredients in "Our Materials" I have ever deleted were entries I added, specifically China Clay and Spanish Iron Oxide once I realized what the Reference Database called these ingredients. Perhaps George deleted the European Feldspar you added? It's not easy to enter a new ingredient complete with chemistry, so having one deleted by someone else would annoy me.

I just fixed "my recipe" for Spotted Aqua Brown which some clever person noticed I had scrambled when I entered it.

[Kathy Ransom]

I was checking out floating Blue George and Wollastonite doesn't come up properly.  When I search "Our Materials" it is misspelled as Wollastoniet.  May solve a few problems with this correction :)