All times are US Mountain Time
GeyserTimes.org is a "crowd-sourced" database. That means we're all responsible for maintaining and policing the data to the best of our knowledge. Confirming and flagging entries are two current methods to identify correct and incorrect entries. Please use them.It is expected that your timepiece is calibrated to an atomic clock. Recorded eruption times are truncated to the minute. In other words, do not "round up" to the nearest minute. Always round down. If a geyser starts erupting at 11:59:59, the eruption should be recorded as having erupted at 1159, not 1200.
Times are recorded and displayed using a 24-hour clock, otherwise known as military time in the North America. GeyserTimes uses the convention without a colon separator between hours and minutes.
Observations of a geyser that don't directly relate to an eruption can be entered as a note. Notes can refer to a specific point in time or over a range of time. Notes will be useful to future researchers to determine the activity of a geyser between eruptions.
More than one person can enter a time for the same eruption. Given multiple times within the known duration of a geyser, GeyserTimes.org will make one of the entries the "primary" entry and all others "secondary." Only primary entries show up in the daily log, but you can see the related secondary entries listed by viewing the primary entry.
For example someone may enter a webcam time of 1200, but an entry of 1159 or 1203 non-webcam will override the webcam time and become the primary entry.
The primary entry is determined based on the following (in order): exact, electronic, near start, in eruption, webcam, approximate, questionable, time entered (to break ties).
An "entrant" is the person that makes the entry into the database. This is the person's registered username. If you are entering an eruption, you need not supply this information because you are already signed in.
An "observer" is the person that observed the actual eruption and provided the eruption information. This could be anyone. This is useful to help remember who told you about an eruption. If this is left blank, it is assumed that the "entrant" is the "observer."
This designation has 2 uses and is mainly used for only major geysers: 1) When an eruption was observed, but a specific time was not noted. Later, it was remembered that it did erupt at approximately this time. 2) For seasoned observers: Some geysers have tell-tale signs that they erupted. Typically, these entries have simply been labeled "overnight." That is, a geyser was in observation until night-time, left unobserved, and then observed again the following morning. Between those times, it had erupted. A known eruption occurred between certain times. It is appropriate to use the "A" designation for a time half-way between observations (on rare cases, an expert observer may choose to enter a time other than half-way between observations). Approximate entries should always be accompanied by a detailed note explaining the situation to future researchers. If you see a geyser erupting, simply mark the eruption as "in eruption" (ie). The approximate designation is not for guessing the start time of a geyser that is observed in eruption. This designation should also NOT be used for geysers that erupt every few minutes or to mark that your watch was slightly off. Ultimately, the "Approximate" designation helps GeyserTimes calculate intervals. It is understood that these intervals may be incorrect on the order of hours, or, in some cases, days or weeks if the unobserved time-period was longer than overnight.
Please, please, please leave comments as detailed as you can about what you saw. Mark an entry as questionable if you are not 100% sure that a geyser did erupt or that you have identified the correct geyser. Useful for in-the-field observations for inferred eruptions based on steam clouds.