Sometimes inconsistencies in tree structures, taxonomic name relationships or name data can lead to problems on LifeDesks. Most often these problems manifest themselves in one of two ways:
- When creating a new page, image, or reference, you encounter taxa you had previously deleted among the taxon selection choices.
- Taxa you had previously deleted show up in your previews in the EOL content partner registry.
Most often, this happens after a LifeDesk classification has experienced a lot of editing actions, including repeated import and deletion of taxa. The LifeDesk team is aware of these problems and uses semi-automated data monitoring and cleansing tools to keep it under control. Most often the automated routines will take care of problems within a few days. If classification problems persist on your LifeDesk, please let us know.
In order to avoid these problems, it's a good idea to periodically purge deleted names from your LifeDesk:
- Go to Manage Classification › Tree Editor › Other Classifications / Deletions (on the right side of the Tree Editor).
- Select Deleted Names from the menu. This will show you all the names that have been deleted from your LifeDesk since the last purge.
- If none of the names have any content (those would be highlighted in yellow), you can simply click on Clear deleted names. All deleted names should then disappear, and if any should hang around in your names database due to a bug, they will get cleared during the next automatic cleansing process.
If you have names highlighted in yellow in your deleted names list, that means somebody has deleted a taxon which had content attached to it. This content could be an image, a taxon page, a map, or a reference. In order to delete these names, you first need to detach the content from them. To do this, follow these steps:
- Drag the highlighted names back into your primary classification. In order to avoid getting them mixed up with the taxa you want to keep, you could create a temporary parent taxon called deleted names and make the deleted names children of that taxon.
- Once a deleted name is restored to your primary classification, select it and then click on Show Name Data Panel. Click on View taxon page to be taken to the page where you can see all the conent associated with the taxon you want to delete.
- Each image, taxon page, reference, etc. must now be deleted or attached to another group in your primary classification.
- Once you have removed all the content from the taxon, you can go back to the Tree Editor by clicking on the Edit button next to the taxon page title.
- Now you can delete the taxon again, and this time there should be no yellow highlight when it is moved to the Deleted Names because all content has been removed.
- Click on Clear deleted names to finally get rid of the deleted taxa.