A new hot pepper database - with an emphasis on keeping track of names and varieties?

[Pimental]

Well I was gonna say "thanks for all the posts and interest" till I saw the programming language argument/tangent...
 
Juanitos, I like the format of your website, the simple varieties list looks really nice. However your SSO wasn't working for me, nor was the Captcha for a normal user registration, so I couldn't make an account. Who knows, maybe a glitch on my end.
 
When I was wanting to do this, my main way to target/improve participation was ease of use/simplicity. If you only ask a couple of questions about a pepper, like Describe its shape, color, and give me all the names you know for it, you could pretty quickly build the size of your database yourself, and it wouldn't take too much effort for other contributors to add a lot of data as well. All you'd have to do was pull up a seed seller's website and go down their list, entering what you saw. But if you're asking a veritable survey of questions for each pepper, although you get more info per-pepper, my point (and the falling-short of many lists and databases) is that you don't end up with a lot of records, a lot of different peppers catalogued, because each pepper requires so much effort to log.
 
Unfortunately with a new job and some other responsibilities these days, I don't have a lot of time (or interest) to give to these sorts of projects. However I've set up a spreadsheet tonight that we can try to use as a starting place, and see how that goes:
 
Spreadsheet
 
I haven't had time to enter my data yet, but try starting with just putting the basic info of the specific cultivars you've grown, and go from there. Really, the goal is a big list with a little info on a lot of varieties, crosses, F1 hybrids, etc.
 
Speaking of which - if you are adding a cross or non-stable variety, be sure to note if it is the F1 you are describing and giving a name to, or a cross that's been stabilized over many generations, or something in-between.
 
Let me know what you think.
-Pimental

 

[Dulac]

 
Haha. First, I didn't say no JS; I said if your site 100% does not work without JS, you've shat the bed. Python has its warts, absolutely, but saying "x isn't perfect so don't criticize y" is truly ridiculous. PHP is fundamentally garbage from a language design standpoint. JS really isn't a lot better, and using it on the server might have been the worst web development idea in the last decade... it seems to me you could benefit from expanding your experience a bit. I made the same kind of arguments before I actually invested myself in learning tools that suck a lot less.
 
SPAs are a terrible idea from the standpoints of usability, indexability, testability, etc... in the first place, so yeah, also not a very compelling point.

 
You don't know what you're talking about. It's easy to test frontend SPAs built in react. It also sounds like you don't know wtf memorization is. Reusable components get no points in usability? SPAs are absolutely brilliant. You're clueless. Yeah, all three of these languages have warts. I'm writing a Linux app in c as we speak, so it's pretty stupid to assume I need to expand my experience. I don't even like php, but I'm not going to crap on someone who does. At least he built something that works. What are you going to suggest he use? He reused code to fit his needs here, which makes more sense than rebuilding it in python, which would be slower btw. Python is also slower than nodeJS, which you're also crapping on because it's not your preferred technology.

 

[internationalfish]

You don't know what you're talking about. It's easy to test frontend SPAs built in react. It also sounds like you don't know wtf memorization is. Reusable components get no points in usability? SPAs are absolutely brilliant. You're clueless. Yeah, all three of these languages have warts. I'm writing a Linux app in c as we speak, so it's pretty stupid to assume I need to expand my experience. I don't even like php, but I'm not going to crap on someone who does. At least he built something that works. What are you going to suggest he use? He reused code to fit his needs here, which makes more sense than rebuilding it in python, which would be slower btw. Python is also slower than nodeJS, which you're also crapping on because it's not your preferred technology.

 
Memorization? Do you mean memoization? How very impressive, you manage to fail on both ends of the spectrum, too high and too low. You have no idea what the hell you're talking about. I do feel sorry for you, because I'm pretty sure you're right where I was about ten years ago. I am glad I actually learned those lessons, though, and it'd be just lovely if you could learn them as well without embarrassing yourself at 40. It's almost as pathetic as your chosen ecosystem; pip isn't perfect, but then it doesn't suffer from the juvenile inanity that occasionally results in npm packages just not existing or violating licensing, so hey. Maybe that's something.
 
The idea that one programming language being slower than another in execution time is important is incredibly facile. No one would argue that Python is fast compared to most popular languages. But then if running fast is the only metric you think is important, just pipe everything to /dev/null. Your precious Linux C app will run like wildfire. I disagree with your choice of technology because you have chosen poorly, and being an asshole about it doesn't make you any less wrong.
 
Pimental, I apologize for my role in derailing this, but I just have a really hard time watching morons like this guy spray stupidity. I hope your project goes well, and I'll bow out now.

 

[Dulac]

 
Memorization? Do you mean memoization? How very impressive, you manage to fail on both ends of the spectrum, too high and too low. You have no idea what the hell you're talking about. I do feel sorry for you, because I'm pretty sure you're right where I was about ten years ago. I am glad I actually learned those lessons, though, and it'd be just lovely if you could learn them as well without embarrassing yourself at 40. It's almost as pathetic as your chosen ecosystem; pip isn't perfect, but then it doesn't suffer from the juvenile inanity that occasionally results in npm packages just not existing or violating licensing, so hey. Maybe that's something.
 
The idea that one programming language being slower than another in execution time is important is incredibly facile. No one would argue that Python is fast compared to most popular languages. But then if running fast is the only metric you think is important, just pipe everything to /dev/null. Your precious Linux C app will run like wildfire. I disagree with your choice of technology because you have chosen poorly, and being an asshole about it doesn't make you any less wrong.
 
Pimental, I apologize for my role in derailing this, but I just have a really hard time watching morons like this guy spray stupidity. I hope your project goes well, and I'll bow out now.

 
It was a typo. Point out the problem with the stack and show a better option or shut up. SPAs were not around 10 years ago. JS has changed big time. I use MERN professionally and other stacks. Not sure why you feel the need to berate people. I'm guessing you feel like a insecure hack. My c app runs well /shrug. Python is slow. Show me a benchmark where it beats another popular language. I agree that doesn't make it bad. It's the crappy OOP, FP, and module system that do. Its perk is libraries built in c/c++.
 
Edit: I suggest you take a look around and see what major websites are using. Mostly React.

 

[Pimental]

Welp, I was hoping someone would contribute to the list, but...^
 
Actually, there are definitely some good suggestions early on about how to get people to contribute, thanks juanitos, slewis, and especially pollennut. I'm not sure what my thoughts are yet, the spreadsheet is still open, and I'll try to add my own peppers soon. It may be a flop of an idea, and it is a lot of work to put together, regardless. I did add a 'source' column, so that you can put a way to get each variety if you're interested. Honestly the best thing to do might just be to just attach to some existing database, like that of juanitos.

 

[Dulac]

Welp, I was hoping someone would contribute to the list, but...^
 
Actually, there are definitely some good suggestions early on about how to get people to contribute, thanks juanitos, slewis, and especially pollennut. I'm not sure what my thoughts are yet, the spreadsheet is still open, and I'll try to add my own peppers soon. It may be a flop of an idea, and it is a lot of work to put together, regardless. I did add a 'source' column, so that you can put a way to get each variety if you're interested. Honestly the best thing to do might just be to just attach to some existing database, like that of juanitos.

 
I think a few more columns would be good such as heat level and species.

 

[juanitos]

i should put the code on github so you guys can contribute if u want

 

[Pimental]

Honestly, in looking more at the database website @juanitos made (pepperdatabase.org), I really like it and I think it's probably suitable for what I'd want.
 
Right now, you have to add a photo of each pepper variety you add, but if you've grown it before, all you'd have to do is add the photo and the most basic info about the pepper, and we'd probably be able to expand the PepperBase pretty significantly.
 
I guess I can keep the spreadsheet open, but I don't think it's as useful as what juanitos has already put together, even if the spreadsheet is a little faster right now.
 
Best,
Pimental

 

[The Hot Pepper]

We'll be introducing one near the end of the year or early 2024.

Which is the better name for a pepper database?

Just curious, which name do you prefer for a pepper database that has wikipedia style editing? Keep in mind it would still use the memberbase from here and be a section of the website, but the domain would be used to go to the database directly and for branding purposes.

thehotpepper.com

 

[Bou]

We'll be introducing one near the end of the year or early 2024.

Which is the better name for a pepper database?

Just curious, which name do you prefer for a pepper database that has wikipedia style editing? Keep in mind it would still use the memberbase from here and be a section of the website, but the domain would be used to go to the database directly and for branding purposes.

thehotpepper.com

In case you did not know the Pepperfriends forum already host a capsicum database. It is certainly not completre but it could be use as a starting point.

https://www.pepperfriends.org/dbpf/dbpf.asp

 

[PaulinaFK]

I can do any development / hosting on the idea.
Juanitos makes enough to support hosting costs.
it is pretty dead i haven't made an update in 6 months, see activity page, but i am happy to work on it.

pepperdatabase.org

The problem is getting active users.
A database is pretty boring.
You either are searching for information or updating it.

people like to visit places where there are more active userbases.
thp, facebook, reddit, twitter, etc

---

next the biggest competitor in free information is wikipedia
it is not hard to create an account and create pages
but the reference citing requirements / image uploading is a pain

it is more for hard data by accredited sources not just gardeners growing stuff in their backyard.
(even if we are a primary source and have direct knowledge)

also reviews are not possible

---

so really the questions can be rephrased to:

how to get people active on a site they will only check maybe 10-20 times a year?

how to get people to spend time updating varieties they grow?

how to reduce barrier to entry. so people can post freely easily?

how to get people excited / interested about it? i currently do a terrible job promoting it.

---
plan 1
at first i though oh my website is crap maybe that is the problem. also i wanted experience using a new web framework so, why not.
i rewrote it using material design similar to a google application.
it is not perfect but it is more readable now
but that didn't bump any traffic
so i didn't have much motivation to work on bug fixes much.

plan 2
create a page for discussions.
with active user engagement on the site maybe people would update the varieties they grew as they came to talk to other users on the site.
i tested this a little bit but without users this is kinda pointless.
most people already post on facebook/reddit/thp they don't want to post on this website as well.

plan 3
i wanted to learn google single sign on.
so i implemented it, maybe that would be easier for users than managing another password.

users still have to create an account so maybe that's still too annoying!?
but i want to track users. maybe eventually doing a ranking system and make users easily contactable / searchable
also the main reason to require accounts and verify email addresses is to stop spam bots from posting ads.

plan 4
add notification system so users are prompted to come back to the site if they are tagged or a post / var they follow is updated.
i tested this a little but with no users doesn't matter hehe
---

current plan

being an admin of the reddit seed exchange i have control of how it is run. currently we just used spreadsheets to record it.

my idea is to implement a whole database system for the exchange on pepperdatabase.
users will upload their submission data (variety name, pictures, description, num packets, etc)

did you notice that data!?
that's the same kind of stuff i am looking for on variety pages!
i can sideload all that information into the variety tables!
wooo i tricked people into updating variety information for free.. lol

another benefit
we can run this like a real life seed bank! accession data!
but even better since we have a yearly exchange we can keep the data updated annually!

this means someone grows a reaper strain 111 from joe bob,
in 5 years if people continue to grow it we can see its expected phenotype, germination rate, etc.

then when trading you can be sure you are getting the exact phenotypes you want (because they will all have pictures)

"oh i was browsing reaper accessions and i think i like #111 submitted by joe bob the best, i'm gonna message him or one of the others who grew it, or comment on that accessions page and tag someone"

or we can also identify bad phenotype accessions and also identify users if they are sending in crap seeds.
"90% of accessions sent in by billy bob resulted in bad pheno... maybe he needs help in his grow or.. i don't want any of his seeds"

With the data can also use it to collect statistics if we want to provide users with insightful information
50% of all jalapeno reviews report it having randomly varying heat depending on your source
90% of reaper accessions don't have tails. XD
sandia pepper has 100% favorable reviews on all accessions, must be a great pepper
seeds sourced from juanito have been posted 100 times and 100% germination rate yay they are the best... lol

anyway this post is too long, feel free to comment on anything.

visit the website and let me know why you think it sucks, heh.

https://pepperdatabase.org

sample pic

I have seen this site and love the idea! Thanks for putting the site together. What I did not understand is why some peppers dont have an accession number? I found this site through the seed exchange on reddit as I want to participate this year.

 

[Pr0digal_son]

In case you did not know the Pepperfriends forum already host a capsicum database. It is certainly not completre but it could be use as a starting point.

https://www.pepperfriends.org/dbpf/dbpf.asp

It will be going through some updates since the Capsicum compendium has been released recently. The changes will be mostly with the wild species as many new ones have been discovered,removed and or combined.

It definitely is not complete but it has a lot of info gained in situ and from members growing plants and filling out ID cards and photos,and not just copying data from other sources.