Make it easier to fave observations

[bouteloua]

Can we get the favorite star added to and/or made clickable in a few areas on the website? Especially the taxon page and on Identify.

In the absence of some sort of photo/observation "guide quality" ranking system, it would help a lot for displaying by the best/guide-worthy photos, e.g. fewer class assignment selfies and blurry pics up front on the photo browser page.

I would also personally prefer that faving an observation does not also "follow" it automatically (I use the "follow" button to follow), though I know others probably use the feature differently.

cassi

[Russell P]

I've been wishing for all of that myself. 

[Charlie Hohn]

thirded that fave shouldn't mean follow.

[megatherium]

I'd also like fave to not auto-follow. That would get pretty overwhelming if I were using fave as intended to mark quality photos.

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[Mark Rosenstein]

I suspect that I am not alone in using "favorite" not to mean I like the photo, but that the observation has an interesting discussion or merits more study.  I suspect I am not alone in this.  Which means that choosing the most favorited photos may get the most problematic ones, rather than the best illustrations.

If you're looking for a crowd-sourced way to pick the best photos, you either need an explicit photo quality vote, or to introduce a separate observation bookmark so that we don't have to use favorites for that.

-Mark

[Charlie Hohn]

yeah i haven't been super consistent with how I use faves since I haven't been certain about how we are supposed to. While I occasionally fav a neat photo, I mostly fav things that seem unusual or special, such as an out of range observation that seems legit, an odd form of a plant, something rare I am interested in keeping bookmarked, etc. I definitely don't use it to mean 'best photo for ID purposes' as I am more likely to fav something unusual than a boring old normal summer sugar maple leaf or whatever. I also sometimes fav myself, which feels a bit silly like facebook liking my own post, but I do it when i want to keep track of a few special things I find.

Maybe we need more clarity on what we should fav?

[Star Donovan]

Ditto, Mark & Charlie.
I think it doesn't help that we've been conditioned by years of  browser usage to associate some combination of a star symbol and  a variation of the word "fave" to mean a bookmark.

[Alex Rebelo]

I agree with both points. Fav'ing is a nice way to measure how popular an observation is, we've also been using it as a voting system for the top observation of the month in s. Africa

[bobby23]

I would love to see these revisions, but I don't think there's a lot of formality with "favs" intentionally. I think some users would find it too restrictive to say "you can only fav some observations because of X, but not Y". Some of the most faved observations on iNaturalist, including some Observations of the Day, are sometimes preferred solely because they are funny, and it does not reflect the photo's quality or how easy the organism can be seen (Exhibit A).

Sometimes a faved observation is preferred because it represents a unique moment (Exhibit B) or for what it says about humans (Exhibit C). Sometimes it's because the organism depicted is rare (Exhibit D) or just cute (Exhibit E). Sometimes it's primarily because of the comment given by the user on the observation (Exhibit F). I honestly think consistency with favs is a bit overrated. Users should be allowed to fav observations for any reason. I think that it would be better to introduce a quality-detection system separate from favs, but maybe that's just me.

I definitely agree that "following" should be separate from "faving".

On Tuesday, March 13, 2018 at 11:19:03 AM UTC-4, bouteloua wrote:

[Tony Iwane]

Hey folks, we've added a fave button (and keyboard shortcut) to Identify. Faving still = following, however, but we'll consider changing that. We're now also showing the number of observations the user has in the Identify modal.

cassi, when you say the fave button should be added to the taxon page, do you mean in the photo browser? 

Tony

[cassi saari]

cassi, when you say the fave button should be added to the taxon page, do you mean in the photo browser? 

Yep! See the 4th attached image in original message ("fav-taxon").
But if there are plans to move to some sort of photo quality ranking system as mentioned above, we should probably just wait for that.

cassi

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[paloma]

Is there any update on the consideration of changing fave so it doesn't create a follow? I just starting faving a couple of photos I thought were very nice, but unfaved them because I don't want to follow them.

[Mark Tutty]

You can fav and then unselect follow, both steps are available from the identify screen. Changing this would add steps to what others do, and possibly without then realising it has changed! My vote for leaving it as it is now...

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

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[paloma]

You're right. I just need to get in the habit of remembering to uncheck "follow." I can live with that. Thanks for the reminder.

[Mark Tutty]

When I go to full view, I do it with a ctrl-click, so that it opens in a new tab. Then, when I close that tab, I am back to where I was up to in the identify screen 😊

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

 

From: paloma
Sent: Thursday, 6 December 2018 5:02 AM
To: iNaturalist
Subject: Re: [inaturalist] Re: Make it easier to fave observations

 

Mark, thanks! I never thought of it working differently on Identify, but I just tried it and it does work. I have no problem with limiting my faves to when I'm on Identify--it will just take a little practice because if I like something enough to fave it I've probably already gone to full view. But it works for me!

On Wednesday, December 5, 2018 at 1:40:34 AM UTC-8, Mark Tutty wrote:

[paloma]

Thanks for the tip, Mark!